


Keeping You Forever and For Always

by Rearviewdreamer



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, OT5, Scientist Louis, kyle xy au, me entertaining me, superhuman Harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-16 23:49:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 52,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11839581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rearviewdreamer/pseuds/Rearviewdreamer
Summary: Louis only went poking around in the woods one evening in the name of science and saving the polluted lake that everyone else had long since given up on. He ends up leaving with a lot more than a few toxic water samples when he stumbles upon a belly-buttonless man in the shadows who could possibly be a nudist but is most definitely more than ordinary.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A few months ago I went on a hunt for a Kyle XY au and nearly cried because I couldn't find one, so I thought, 'I'll just write a quick 15-20k to get it out of my system.'
> 
> LOL

“ _Let’s go!_ _Just leave it here_ ,” comes a voice from directly above. It sounds gnarled. Like words trapped beneath ice that got shredded and frayed on their way out. Not at all like the words that come next, frightened and stuttered.

“ _But we can’t just leave. He’s- He’s-”_

“ _Nothing_. _Don’t be stupid_ ,” cuts the icy voice, much clearer than it had seemed before. “ _Now let’s go.”_

The source of the two voices remains unknown even after the sounds of soft chirps and twitters replace them. Everything fades from black and opens to a brilliant scene bursting with color and a bright light that tingles everywhere it touches as two figures quickly run past and disappear out of sight.

Maybe they’ll come back.

*

“The monitor has been fluctuating for days, but I didn’t think anything of it because it does that from time to time, but now I see that the numbers are in a steady decline and are only getting lower.” Louis smiles. “Last night it was thirty parts per billion. This morning it’s at _twenty-five_. Zayn. I mean, I know that not a whole lot, but, do you know what this could mean? Do you understand how great this is?” Louis beams over at his friend with his shoulders hunched over his laptop, same as he was ten minutes ago when Louis burst into his office waving his newest algae bloom report in his face like a victory flag. It’s the same reaction Louis got when he told his boss the great news so it’s not like it’s shocking.

“Are you even listening to me?”

“No,” Zayn answers, not even looking up at him to answer.

“Well fucking stop what you’re doing and listen to me,” Louis demands, earning zero reaction whatsoever.

“I’m working, Lou. What do you want from me?” His friend momentarily blinks up at him for the first time, his dark brown eyes filled with the amount of grumpy impatience usually seen in toddlers.

“I want you to be excited!” Louis gushes only for his friend to roll his eyes. “Hear me out for a minute, Z. Just think, if what I’m seeing is true and the trend continues this way your children and your grandchildren could _swim_ in that lake. You could take them fishing and there would be actual fish there. And not the gross dead ones that are usually floating around, but like, _live_ ones!”

All the animal and plant species that have been affected and nearly wiped out from the pollution will have repopulated by then. That whole ecosystem would get a fresh start. Louis could jump up and down from how thrilling that is to think about and Zayn just blinks at him.

“I can’t swim, I can’t fish, and I don’t have kids.”

Now it’s Louis’ turn to roll his eyes. “Well, no, not yet, but you might someday. That’s why I want you to get excited with me, Zaynie. Come on. Be excited about outdoorsy nerd stuff just this once,” Louis pleads.

“Okay. SteelCore Designs has agreed to go seventy percent solar energy for all their manufacturing plants. I’m excited about _that_. Lake mold? Not so much.”

“Congrats. That’s amazing,” Louis says, because that really is a great victory for Zayn. He and their company’s renewable energy team have been trying to get SteelCore for years. Maybe if Louis’ environmental protection department had a whole team instead of just him more people would be excited about the lake restoring itself.

“That’s great news, but it’s not actually mold, Z. It’s algae, which I know in most people’s defense looks a lot _like_ mold except molds are a type of fungi whereas algae are more plant-like in nature and flourish under the right circumstances such as the conditions of our lake, and- and-” His friend tilts his head to the side as Louis once again dives into a long-winded explanation he gives at least once per week to somebody. “Aaaand you don’t care,” Louis realizes before he gets too far into his speech.

“That would be correct, my friend,” Zayn smirks.

Louis could go into way more detail. He knows things about harmful algae blooms and pollution that would make this entire agency’s head spin, but he won’t waste his breath. He also can’t waste any more time chatting. He’s got to get out to that lake.

“I’ve got to go. I have to make sure this isn’t a fluke.”

Zayn’s eyebrows knead together as Louis collects all of his reports. “To the lake? _Now_? It’s the end of the day, Lou. Just wait until the morning. It’s not like the water is going anywhere.”

He can’t wait that long. He’ll never sleep not knowing for sure if he’s on the cusp of something miraculous.

“I’m going now. But don’t worry. I’ll be back way before dark.” Zayn doesn’t look very convinced of this. “Do you want to come with? Keep me company?” Louis offers.

“To radiation central to stomp through river mud and goop? I’ll pass.”

“It’s a _lake_. It’s lake mud and goop, and suit yourself because I’m going anyway.”

“I figured you would. Just don’t fall in,” Zayn grins. “See you at home.”

“Right. Fall in and never come home. Got it. See you later!” Louis calls over his shoulder.

He grabs his work bag with all of his portable lab equipment and is on the road in no time. It’s only a twenty-minute drive to the lake which flies by since most people are still at work and he’s the only one heading away from the city.

Louis ignores the rusted chain at the forest’s entrance deterring visitors from wandering inside as he ducks right under it and falls in step along the tall overgrown path. No one comes to the lake anymore, not that Louis can really blame them. In its current state, the water isn’t fit for consumption or external contact, and anything still managing to live in it shouldn’t be consumed either. People used to camp here or spend hot days cooling off beneath the canopy of trees but that was over twenty years ago. That was back when Louis used to play here as a child with his sister at their favorite place on Earth. Now it just looks like a soggy graveyard.

The old monitor that Louis placed out here two years ago is practically ancient but it’s still reliable after all this time. Louis inspects it to confirm that it’s still in good working condition and he can’t find anything wrong with it. It doesn’t look like it’s been tampered with or fried from the sun, so the only other explanation for the sudden dip in pollution reports must be what Louis had been hoping for; it’s getting better.

The peace of mind he’s just given himself about the monitor is proof enough of what he came out here for. Honestly, he’s happy with just that, however, a water sample would be able to tell him even more. No one really cares about the lake. Everyone at work, including his boss, thinks it’s a lost cause and that he’s been wasting his time by monitoring it, but hard proof of its condition improving will be very hard to ignore.

With his bag strapped over his shoulder, he carefully slides his feet along the fallen tree next to him that’s leaning further out into the water where the algae blooms are the worst. He keeps Zayn’s playful warning about not falling into the water in mind as he slips on a pair of gloves and dips a few sample beakers into its murky depths.

It’s still way too green for his taste, but it’s better than it was. Louis grins noticing a happy little minnow caught in one of his beakers. He’d take it back to the lab to measure its toxin levels, but it’s alive and thriving here in a place where hardly anything does so Louis decides to put it back. If the water quality continues improving, there will be plenty more minnows the next time he comes out here.

The sun is already beginning to dip below the tree line once Louis finishes. He starts back towards his car with his beakers safely tucked away inside his bag, following the faint dirt path until he can’t really see it anymore and starts walking back from memory. He walks for a while and keeps expecting to come out of the woods at any moment. Louis doesn’t think he’s lost per se but he definitely got turned around at some point because the trees and brush are only getting thicker as the sky grows darker above him.

He realizes his mistake once the moon begins to make an appearance in the sky. Earlier he deviated from the path for a moment because of a few fallen trees from a past storm blocking his way. He went left to go around them and apparently never truly righted himself again, continuing on in the wrong direction.

He needs to go back the way he came and keep walking until he finds the fallen trees again. That’s the only way he’s going to make it out of here without calling someone for help, but as soon as he turns to do that his right foot slips from underneath him, sending him tumbling down a steep hill. Louis lands in a crumpled pile at the bottom of it, wincing when he feels something cool flowing between him and the hard ground. He presses his fingers into the liquid and brings his hand up to his face to better see it. He sighs in relief when he sees it’s just water and not blood but then he squeezes his eyes shut cursing himself because he literally just collected those samples from the lake and now they’re ruined.

With a frustrated huff Louis pushes himself up into a seated position groaning from a sharp pain now throbbing in his side. He takes a deep breath and carefully twists his torso from side to side, satisfied that nothing’s broken when the pain starts to fade after a minute.

Wherever he currently is isn’t too far from where he just fell. He can still see the top of the hill from where he’s sitting. There has to be a way back up other than trudging up the steep side of it. Maybe if he walks around the perimeter of the hill it’ll flatten out enough for him to climb.

He stands up on his feet wincing again at the slight pain in his side, but he cuts his wounded groan short at the sound of something snapping directly behind him. Louis whips around straining his eyes in the dark to try and see what’s there amongst the trees. At first, he can’t see anything big enough to make a sound like that. He even thinks he must have imagined it, but then his eyes adjust to reveal a pair of bare feet attached to a whole person standing in the tree line watching him.

Louis’ first instinct is to yell for help, but then he remembers no one would hear him because he’s the only person dumb enough to come out here alone. He discreetly reaches for his phone in his back pocket, his thudding heart stopping and turning to lead when he realizes it’s tucked away inside his bag and probably useless since he just drenched it in water.

Zayn was right. He should’ve just waited until tomorrow to come here and now he’s going to be killed at a toxic lake site by some crazy person in the woods all in the name of harmful algae blooms and it’s his own fucking fault.

The man watching him so carefully isn’t wielding a bloody chainsaw or a butcher’s knife Louis notices after a few seconds of trying to figure out which gruesome way he’s about to go. Actually, he’s not even coming after Louis. Oddly enough, the man is just standing there watching him, stark naked mind so that’s a bit strange but he looks almost as frightened as Louis, if not more so.

“H-Hello?” Louis tries, clearing his throat and trying it again when his voice comes out thin and airy. “Um, I’m really sorry for disturbing you. I didn’t mean to come this way at all so I’m just gonna go,” Louis explains as he stoops down to pick up his bag. “I’m leaving right now. Forgetting I was ever even here,” he reiterates.

Louis takes a couple of steps backwards, ready to turn and take off back up the hill where he belongs, but he stops once the man does the same thing, taking two large steps towards him. The man seems to rethink the action when Louis freezes in alarm, making him retreat into the tree line where he had been hiding before.

He wants to follow Louis. That much is obvious, but the man seems almost scared to do so. Not at all the kind of behavior Louis would expect from a mass murderer.

“Are you lost? Are you out here by yourself?”

Louis is met with more silence and a pair of wide, curious eyes that he can’t bring himself to run away from and abandon.

“If you’re lost I-I can help you get back to the path.” Still nothing. Just more silence. “Did you hear me?” Louis asks. “Or, _can_ you hear me?” Louis takes a tentative step towards the man with his hand clenched tight around his bag in case he needs to use it as a weapon.

The man copies him and steps out of the shadow of the trees. Louis makes himself stay completely still and calm so as not to startle him again, offering the man a small grin of encouragement as he comes to stand right in front of him.

He’s tall this close up with smooth creamy skin illuminated by the pale glow of the moon. His long hair falls against his chest in dark ringlets that match the color of his thick eyebrows. Louis would say he’s breathtaking if not for how wildly out of place the man looks out here, nervously blinking at Louis like he’s unsure of him or he’s waiting for something to happen.

“Good. There you are,” Louis praises him. “Now we can find our way out of here together. Um, do you have a name by any chance?” If he does, he’s certainly not telling Louis what it is. “Well, I’m Louis,” he answers himself. “And, um, I don’t know where your clothes are but I have a jacket if you’re cold,” he says, noticing the goose bumps visible along his bare shoulders.

Louis digs the jacket out of his bag and holds it out in offer, glad to see that it’s only a little wet along the bottom from his samples breaking. The man takes the jacket in his hands and looks at it for a few seconds before meeting Louis’ eyes again with that lost expression.

“Er- I can help if you need,” Louis says when the man still seems confused about what to do after a few seconds. “Here, let me,” he offers. Louis takes the jacket back, holding it out by its long sleeves before ducking down to tie it around the man’s thin waist since it won’t fit over his broad shoulders. Louis tries to keep his eyes averted as he works, staring straight ahead at the man’s navel to keep himself distracted, or where his navel _should_ be. Where everyone’s navel _is_ ; everyone who’s human anyway.

Louis quickly stands up from him eyeing the man with renewed fear and suspicion. He backs away with unease rolling through his stomach. He doesn’t know what the hell is going on. He just wants to go home.

“Alright, who are you?” It’s a much better question to start with than _what_ are you? Either way it goes unanswered just like all the questions before it. “Fucking say something! Or if you’re going to kill me, just fucking do it already!” Louis demands.

He regrets yelling as soon as the words are out of his mouth because the man shrinks back from his harsh tone. He starts moving to walk backwards towards the trees again until Louis grabs his hand to stop him.

“W-Wait. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I just- I’m sorry okay? I really am. You don’t have to go,” he assures him.

He drops the man’s hand after a moment when he seems like he’s going to stay. The man still isn’t talking or answering his multiple questions but he looks significantly less anxious with Louis speaking in a calm manner. Louis isn’t making a very good impression of himself trying to figure out what the man is even doing here in the first place so he decides to go back to his original plan of getting the fuck out of here instead.

“So, my car is up at the entrance if you’d like to come along. I can give you a ride, but we need to find a way back up the hill first,” he explains.

Louis can’t get them out of the woods by walking backwards all night to keep an eye on this man. He takes a deep breath and turns his back to him for the first time, hoping he’s not about to be hurt. He closes his eyes as he walks forward in fearful anticipation of the worst, but all he hears are soft footsteps cautiously following behind him at a distance.

It doesn’t take long for them to find their way out once they get back to the path that Louis will never _ever_ deviate from again. At least not in the fucking dark.

Louis glances behind him once they finally reach his car to make sure his new companion is still with him. He is; shuffling along and still quiet as ever as Louis throws his bag into the back seat.

He copies Louis opening the driver’s side door by climbing in on the passenger’s side, jumping in surprise when the car roars to life beneath them.

“So, where do you live? I can take you wherever… anywhere you want to go,” Louis offers.

He gets the answer he expects when his passenger does nothing except blink at him with kind green eyes and a soft grin that matches his own. Perhaps he _has_ nowhere to go.

“Alright, then. To mine it is,” Louis answers himself, praying he’s not about to bring home a psychopath or worse as he backs out onto the road.

*

The ride to Louis’ house is just as quiet as the beginning of their evening but at least now the radio lends a hand at making things less awkward. Louis tries to keep his eyes on the road and not the mostly naked, belly-buttonless man sitting next to him fiddling with the radio controls like he’s never seen one before. It’s a difficult feat to accomplish, especially when all Louis has are questions and no definite way to get answers.

His old car tires groan as they roll to a stop at the end of his driveway. He unbuckles himself from the driver’s seat, swearing under his breath as he watches the silhouettes of all three of his housemates walk past the living room window and then plop down on the couch.

“ _Fuck_.”

Everybody _would_ be home the night that Louis randomly finds a naked lake man. They’ll never let him live it down if he waltzes into their house with him wearing nothing but a fucking jacket. Their neighbors wouldn’t let him forget it either if they happened to see it all go down.

“I’ll be right back,” he says, already devising a plan to get in and out as quickly as possible. Louis moves to get out of the car and his passenger moves to do the same until Louis places a hand on his thigh to stop him.

He jerks his hand back with his cheeks burning red when his palm touches nothing but cool skin.

“Er- Sorry. I didn’t mean to do that,” he apologizes even though the man doesn’t seem offended. He looks more concerned that Louis is leaving him. “I’m going to run inside for just a second but then I’m coming right back out, okay? I need you to stay here, but I promise to come right back,” Louis says, nodding until the man copies him and nods back. He may understand English or he may not, but he doesn’t move from the passenger’s side when Louis darts up the drive and through his front door so that’s something.

An accusatory, ‘ _There_ you are’ is the first thing Louis hears when he walks in. “I thought you _actually_ fucking fell in, Louis. What the fuck? I was worried sick. Do you ever check your fucking phone? I’ve been calling you for over an hour.”

Louis’ back receives all of Zayn’s chastising as he makes his way over the collection of shoes and work bags cluttering the path leading from the door. He nearly trips and busts his head open when a pair of Liam’s stethoscopes tangled with one of the hoodies Niall was too lazy to hang up tries to take him out.

“S-Sorry, Z. I got a little distracted,” Louis explains as he hurries through the living room and up the stairs.

He steps into the sanctuary of his bedroom and grabs the first pair of bottoms he sees hanging over the door of his wardrobe. There’s a purple t-shirt crumpled at his feet as well so he grabs that along with a pair of blue flip-flops that he’s pretty sure belongs to one of his housemates.

“Hey, Tommo, Li made stir-fry. Want me to get you some?” Niall calls when Louis resurfaces at the top of the stairs and then runs down them at full speed. Louis stops half-way out the front door to shoot his friend a tight-lipped grin.

“Uh. Yeah, sure. Later. Thanks.”

“Wait a minute, Lou. Where are you running off to so fast? Come sit down. You just got h-” Louis doesn’t even hear the rest of Liam’s sentence before he shuts the front door to sprint back to his car.

Louis half expected to find it empty but when he gets there he’s met with the same pair of green eyes that light up when Louis opens his door from the outside and pulls him up by his hand. He stuffs the man into the back seat and starts throwing everything he smuggled out of the house at him.  

“Put this over your head,” Louis says.

He holds the wrinkled t-shirt out to the man neck-hole first and watches in relief as the man slowly pulls it over his head. So he _does_ understand English.

Louis helps him with the sleeves that fit too snugly over his shoulders and then hands him the pair of boxer briefs next. “Jacket off. Legs go in on each side like this,” Louis demonstrates by pretending to step into a pair of invisible underwear.

The man catches on quickly and pulls them on. He has to sit up on his knees to get them all the way up his thighs. Louis quickly averts his eyes again but they still catch on the abnormally smooth plane of the creamy stomach before him. He still can’t figure what’s up with that.

The flip-flops are too small. The man’s heels hang two whole inches off the backs of them so Louis decides to ditch them in his backseat along with all the other shit that’s accumulated there over the years from living in their four-person madhouse.

It’s not like this man hasn’t been walking around barefoot this whole time anyway. His feet are filthy.

Louis grabs him by the hand once he’s dressed and starts up the drive with him in tow. Louis pauses with his hand on the door knob, glancing back at his companion who doesn’t seem to realize he’s about to enter hell itself.

“They’re harmless but just try to keep it moving and avoid direct eye contact,” Louis tells him. “And don’t say anything.” The silent man just grins down at him, exposing two small dimples on either side of his cheeks. “Perfect. Just like that,” Louis praises him before pushes open the door.

He hears Niall’s voice again first thing when he enters the room powering through it and over their combined mess as fast as he can.

“Tommo, what the hell is up with you tonight and- and-” Whatever he was about to say dies on his lips when he notices the gangly man stumbling along behind him. “Oh. _Oh_. Nevermind,” Niall smiles, his eyes taking inventory of their new guest and his long, bare legs quickly moving to keep up. “Look at you, Louis! Look at _him_. I’m proud of you, mate!”

“Wait. Who is that?” Liam snorts sounding just as delightfully fascinated as Niall as he sits up to get a better look.

“Yeah, who is that?” Zayn echoes, chuckling when Louis and his mix-matched, half-dressed shadow nearly tumble back down the stairs from trying to climb them so fast. “No wonder you took so long getting home,” he sniggers. “I don’t blame you, Lou. I actually approve.”

“Same, Tommo!” Niall shouts. “Come out when you’re done! We want to meet him!”

Louis shuts his bedroom door on the chorus of catcalls and cheers he receives for him finally ‘getting it in’.

He rests his forehead against his door and releases a deep breath once he hears his friends quiet down.

“I’m sorry about that. They’re really not so bad, it’s just that I don’t go out much… or I _do_. Sometimes, but like, I’m never really seeing anybody so they always make a big deal about stupid stuff like this and-” Louis realizes he's wasting his breath when he notices his audience of one just staring at his mouth move. “Aaand you don’t care,” he laughs to himself. “Sorry again.”

He rests his back against his door and gives the man a quick once-over, once again noting how filthy his feet and ankles are. There’s evidence of the woods stuck in his hair and clinging to stretches of his pale skin making Louis wonder how long he was out there before their paths crossed.

It was probably more than a few hours. Someone must be out there looking for him and Louis intends to reunite them, but in the meantime, he can at least let the man bathe.

Louis digs around his bedroom for a fresh set of towels and a clean outfit, stepping over his home lab equipment and mounds of dirty clothes that never made it into the hamper.

He pokes his head out of his door to check that the coast is clear before escorting his guest to his and Liam’s shared bathroom at the end of the corridor. He holds the door open for the man and then places the towels and the clean outfit in his arms.

“These are for you,” Louis says. “And there’s shampoo and extra toothbrushes and all that stuff under the sink.” Louis opens the door to the little cabinet to show the man where everything is. And then does a quick demonstration of how to operate the shower and use it all including the razors, which truthfully Louis is a little wary about leaving him alone with.

It’s a good thing he isn’t stubbly. He probably won’t even need to shave. 

“I’m going to go downstairs and call some people and see if anyone’s looking for you. You’ll be okay up here, right?” he asks. It’s a rhetorical question, but the man nods after a while, instantly putting Louis’ mind at ease.

“Okay, good. That’s great. Well, you get started and I’m going to pop downstairs really quick. I’ll be back in a little while, okay?”

Louis offers the man a grin before stepping out of the bathroom. He waits at the door until he hears movement on the other side. It takes a few minutes but eventually Louis hears the squeak of their old shower knobs turning.

He heads downstairs, his cheeks flushing bright pink when everyone whoops and whistles at his disheveled appearance. They think he’s been rolling around in bed with someone when really he just fell down a fucking hill.

“That was quick,” Zayn smirks, giving him a once-over. It only grows wider when Louis sticks his middle finger up at him and tells him to fuck off. “So, where’s your new friend? Resting up for round two? Round three, perhaps?” he teases. Louis ignores him and his other friends’ smug giggling.

“I need the number to the police station,” Louis mutters as he digs around for a laptop. _Anyone’s_ laptop so long as it’s charged unlike his own.

Every smirk in the room disappears once they all realize Louis is serious about needing the number to the police.

Liam sits up straight with his voice more serious than Louis has heard it all evening. “Lou? What’s happened? What’s wrong?”

“Yeah. Where is he?” Niall asks though Louis ignores him in favor of digging through the mess on the coffee table. “Jesus, Lou. What did you do, kill him?”

“ _No,_ I didn’t kill him,” Louis rolls his eyes. “He’s in the shower you idi- _Yes_! I’ve got one!” Louis cheers when he comes across Liam’s laptop half-buried under a pile of bills at Zayn’s feet.

He opens it and immediately searches for the number he needs, pausing before going any further when he notices three very bewildered faces staring at him from the couch. “Okay, I’ll try to explain.”

“That would be nice,” Zayn says, watching him expectantly. “What’s up? Tell us.”

They’re probably going to think he’s insane or high, but Louis takes a deep breath anyway.

“Okay, so, I went out to the lake earlier to check the monitor because for some reason the algae levels were decreasing,” he begins. “Actually, this has nothing to do with the police, but I’m like, _really_ excited about that, guys. You see, last night the level was at thirty parts per billion but this morning I checked and it was down to only _twenty-five_. This sort of positive downward trend shows that- that-” Louis stops sharing his good news when he notices his friends blinking at him in confusion much like the man upstairs. “Right. No tangents. Sorry. Um, so long story short; I got lost in the dark, I found him wandering around out there also lost and kind of out of it.” Louis gestures in the general vicinity of the stairs hoping his guest is doing alright. “I brought him along with me to try and help him get home and now I need the number to the police because I don’t know who he is, where he’s from, or why he was out there all alone to begin with, but I know someone must be missing him. He has people. I just need to find them.”

Louis says it all in one breath, rolling his eyes when Niall’s face screws up in horror along with everyone else’s.

“You brought home some bloke you found living in the fucking _woods_?”

“No, he wasn’t _living_ there. I told you he was lost. There was nothing around, Ni. He wasn’t even wearing any clothes.”

“Oh, great,” he mumbles. “So, you brought home a _nudist_ bloke you found living in the fucking woods. Thanks for that.”

“Well what did you want me to do? Leave him out there to die? There was nothing for him to eat and he can’t even drink the bloody water.”

Louis shudders, hoping he hasn’t been ingesting it. Maybe that’s why he seems so off. He’s seen toxic water sources do a lot worse to people.

“Lou, of course we didn’t expect you to just leave him out there. Any of us would have done the same thing,” Liam assures him shooting Niall a look of reprimand when he goes to argue.

“You drove him home and he didn’t give you his name? A number to call?” Zayn frowns.

Louis shakes his head. “No. He hasn’t said anything. I’m not sure if he can.” Louis thought at first that he might be deaf, but it’s obvious that he can hear. He has understood everything Louis has said tonight. He just needed a bit of clarification about the technicalities of things sometimes, but who _doesn’t_ suck at operating showers that aren’t theirs. Louis is certainly guilty of it whenever he goes someplace new.

His friends watch him the whole time he’s on the phone to the missing persons department at the police station. They listen raptly as Louis describes the confused man he found in the middle of nowhere with green eyes, dark curly hair, and the absence of a belly button. Louis avoids looking at his friends’ faces when he hangs up with the police after being told that no one on the missing persons list fits that description and that he may want to seek help because he sounds insane.

“He doesn’t have a fucking _belly button_?” Niall screeches. “How did you neglect to tell us that?!”

Louis slaps at his knee a couple of times to shut him up. “Say it louder, would you, Ni? Jesus. He’s right upstairs.”

“No, I’m actually with Niall on this one,” Zayn speaks up. “What you do you mean he doesn’t have one? How is that even possible?”

Louis doesn’t know. He didn’t exactly have time to sit and chat about it considering the man was freezing in the middle of the wilderness.

“It’s not possible,” Liam says after a while. “Or it’s not supposed to be anyway,” he corrects himself, still dressed in his nursing scrubs from work. “All mammals have a belly button. It’s how we’re created. The umbilical cord pumps nutrients and oxygen from the mother to the fetus. A belly button is like proof of gestation and live birth for humans and animals who sexually reproduce.”

“So, what does that make this guy that Louis found?”

Niall’s question makes everyone glance up at the second floor, causing an uneasy silence to settle over the room. They could sit here and speculate about it all night but the fact still remains that this man needed help. Whoever he is, he was all alone out there and now thanks to Louis, he isn’t. That’s more important than anything else.

“I’m going to go check on him,” Louis announces. “He’s been up there a long time. I want to make sure he’s alright.”

Louis stands up only for Zayn to stand up with him, his deep brown eyes filled with worry.

“Lou, don’t. We don’t know anything about him. He could be dangerous. He could hurt you or worse.”

This man has had every opportunity to cause Louis harm tonight and he hasn’t done anything except trust Louis and look at him like he has all the answers.

“He’s not going to hurt me, Zayn.”

Louis doesn’t know if that’s true or not, but it feels true and that’s good enough for him.

*

Louis knocks twice on the bathroom door once he has made it back upstairs.

He listens with his ear against the wood hearing no signs of the water running anymore so he figures the man must be done.

“Hey in there. Are you all finished?” Louis asks. He waits a few beats before speaking up again. “You’re quiet so I guess you’re done? I’m coming in,” he warns, waiting a few more seconds before gently pushing open the door just to be on the safe side.

He steps into the bathroom, nearly sliding across the floor from the amount of water and soap covering the white tiles. Louis catches himself before he falls, finding his guest standing before him in a pool of water, dripping wet in the fresh outfit that Louis handed him earlier.

At least he’s seemed to remember how clothing works and is no longer walking around starkers.

The bathroom is a mess. There’s water and suds everywhere and Louis is fairly certain Liam’s going to have a stroke when he sees it, but he can’t be too upset when his guest is grinning at him and looking so accomplished.

“How was your shower? Good?” Louis asks, grinning himself when the man nods in answer.

The other outfit he had been wearing is lying soaked on the floor along with the set of towels Louis gave him, but he’s clean and smells like coconut instead of muggy lake air so that’s really all that matters.

“Er- So…” Louis doesn’t really know what to do at this point. He’s out of ideas for tonight about finding out who this man is. He can try calling other stations or even try a different approach entirely, but tomorrow. It’s too late for that right now.

“Are you hungry?” Louis asks, knowing that he must be. “Liam made stir-fry. I can get you some or find you something else to eat if you don’t like that.”

A loud grumbling sound erupts from across the room making Louis’ eyes crinkle up with a smile.

“It sounds like stir-fry might be a winner. Come on. We’ll both have some. I’m starving as well.” Louis holds the bathroom door open gesturing for his hungry friend to follow, hair dripping and all.

*

“Don’t mind us. We’re just going to the kitchen,” Louis explains when all three of his housemates stop bickering over which human anatomy site best fits their needs and pop their heads up from behind Liam’s laptop.

Their gazes fall to the man trailing behind him and every one of their mouths snap shut almost straining their eyes to try and see through the front of the white t-shirt he’s wearing. Louis rolls his eyes when he enters the kitchen and hears Liam, Niall, and Zayn scramble off the couch to tag along.

They all stand in the doorway trying to see over each other, watching as Louis pulls out a chair for their guest and invites him to sit down.

“What are you about to do with him?” Niall whispers as Louis rummages through their silverware drawer and grabs a couple of plates from the cabinet.

“Eat. What’s it look like?” he answers. He uncovers the wok and starts scooping some of the stir-fry onto one of the plates. He sits it down in front of the man along with a napkin and a clean fork. Louis mimes scooping up food with it when he gets a pair of unsure green eyes blinking up at him. The man picks up his fork to copy Louis, his face and eyes lighting up after he takes his first bite.  

“Good?” Louis chuckles, watching as he hardly even chews before swallowing it down and expertly scooping up some more onto his fork. “Well, look at that, Li. He likes your cooking. Good job.”

“That’s because the poor thing probably doesn’t know any better living in the woods all this time,” Zayn mutters earning an elbow to the side when Liam takes offense at the dig and starts recounting all the times that Zayn himself has complimented his cooking when it’s his night to make dinner.

Louis snorts a laugh at their bickering and also the rate at which food is vanishing from the man’s plate. He gets to work fixing his own food, automatically reaching for one more plate when Niall whines over their roommate’s argument about how hungry he still is even though he ate less than an hour ago. “Ah, you’re the best! Thanks, Lou,” Niall exclaims when Louis presents him with what is probably his third serving of dinner tonight. It could even be Niall’s fourth knowing him and his metabolism.

“You’re welcome. I aim to please,” Louis says over the noise as he takes a seat next to their guest whose plate is already almost empty. “Do you have to go to the pub tonight?” Louis asks after Niall sits down across from them and starts to dig in.

“Yep. Leaving in a bit. I’m closing up tonight,” he answers, talking through a massive forkful of noodles and vegetables when he meets Liam’s annoyed gaze across the room. “Oi! Throw me a beer, would you?” he calls over his and Zayn’s cooking debate that’s still going.

Liam sends a cold bottle soaring through the air towards them as he simultaneously insults one of the only meals Zayn can successfully prepare which involves fish sticks from a box.

Niall grins in appreciation when he catches the beer right in the palm of his hand. He opens it and chugs a quarter of it down between forkfuls of food, sighing in relief as it flows down his throat. Liam rolls his eyes, because Niall didn’t say please or even thank you for that matter. He ignores his lack of manners and nudges the refrigerator closed with his hip just as Zayn brings up the time he nearly destroyed their oven trying to bake Louis a birthday cake. Liam catches the handle of the refrigerator before it shuts all the way when he hears another bossy demand of ‘ _Oi_! _Throw me a beer_ , _would you_?’

Liam reaches for one and freezes along with everyone else in the room once they realize it wasn’t Niall who said it.

Everyone turns their attention to the curly-headed man at the table, thickly swallowing down his last bite of food. He blinks over at Niall clutching his bottle and then over at Liam in expectance because he still doesn’t have one.

Zayn’s jaw unlocks and falls open first. “Holy shit. D-Did he just-?”

“Sound _exactly_ like Niall? Yeah. He did,” Liam breathes, looking equal parts wary and impressed. Liam grabs the beer he was just about to toss in Niall’s direction and tosses it to their guest instead, watching in amazement as he catches it, opens it with Niall’s practiced finesse, and then takes several long swallows to wash down his food. He lets out a long, satisfied sigh once his thirst is quenched shooting Liam an appreciative smile.

He has dimples. How charming.

“I thought you said he didn’t talk, Lou!” Zayn hisses from the safety of the door.

Louis is just as shocked as everybody else. “I-I didn’t know he could,” he shrugs innocently. Louis guesses he just didn’t have anything worth saying before.

“He sounded just like me, accent and all! That was _so_ cool,” Niall marvels as he leans in closer to him. “Do it again. Say something else. Go on,” Niall encourages him.

Louis leans in a bit too in anticipation. The man blinks over at him of all people for approval.

“Er- Yeah. Talk if you want, mate,” Louis grins at him. “We’re all ears.”

They’re all eyes as well, staring until the man catches onto what they want him to do and he starts talking more than any of them expected.

“ _Give it back! It’s MY laptop! Why does everybody else always get to use it and I don’t?- Well, stop leaving it out all the time. And quit whining. You sound like Niall- You two don’t even know what you’re Googling! I’M the bloody nurse here. You two probably can’t even say the word Omphalocele let alone spell it- You’re one to fucking talk. You just had to look it up in your dumb medical book so spell THAT,_ ” the man finishes wearing another accomplished grin as he looks around the room. Louis had expected to hear another gravelly version of Niall’s voice come out of his mouth but he just successfully imitated Niall, Zayn, and Liam without missing a beat.

Louis blinks at his three housemates who each turn different shades of pink as Louis bursts out laughing at their stunned faces. “That was brilliant!”

“How the hell did he just do that?” Zayn demands with an ashen face.

“Who cares?” Liam interjects. “How the hell did he _hear_ any of that? He was upstairs the whole time with Louis.”

Louis certainly didn’t hear them bickering over Liam’s laptop like two-year-olds, but clearly someone was listening in.

“What’s Omphalocele anyway?” Louis asks, stumbling over the foreign term as he attempts it. “Why were you looking it up?”

“It’s a condition where babies are born with bellybuttons, but they’re so shallow that they appear to not have one at all,” Liam answers. “It’s more of an indentation over the stomach than anything else, but we didn’t get to research any more than that before you two came down the stairs.”

Louis thinks about each time he has glanced at the man’s stomach tonight and shakes his head. “Don’t waste your time. His belly button isn’t just shallow; there isn’t one there at all.” His stomach is as smooth as the back of Louis’ hand. That’s why he freaked out so much when he first saw it. He has never seen anything like that before.

“See! I told you,” Zayn whispers to Liam out of nowhere. “ _Alien_.”

Louis scoffs at his best friend for one, being paranoid as hell, and two, for being so blatantly rude. “Zayn. Don’t call him that. He’s not an alien.”

“What? I’m not saying it to be mean. It’s the truth. He’s got super-sonic hearing, no clue how to do normal human tasks until he’s shown, and no navel. That screams alien.”

“Or maybe you lot just talk too loud, he’s got some sort of amnesia from being up at the lake for so long, and you’re all fucking idiots because there’s no such thing as aliens.”

“Well, something’s up with him,” Zayn argues. “He could be anybody; any _thing_. What do we really know about him?”

“Louis, I hate to say it, but Zayn kind of has a point. We don’t even know his name,” Liam points out. “Um, Hi. Could you tell us your name?” he asks the man who has been raptly watching their exchanges this whole time, his green eyes glued to everyone’s mouth like he’s trying to memorize the way they move.

The man doesn’t say anything when he’s addressed, which is kind of odd at this point considering he just rambled off an entire conversation he heard from half an hour ago.

“Maybe they don’t give names where he’s from,” Niall teases with a vague glance upward like the man just fell out of the sky.

“Or maybe he just can’t remember it because he’s been through a lot and you’re all pressuring him,” Louis snaps in his defense.

The room falls silent at that. No one dares say a word when Louis stands to clear away their dirty plates and places them in the sink.

“I’ll do the dishes in the morning,” he tells everyone since it’s technically his night. He’d do them now but he has a houseguest to take care of. It’ll just have to wait.

Niall stands up too and wishes everybody a goodnight before quietly ducking out for work leaving Zayn and Liam alone to stare after Louis and his guest as they leave as well.

“He’s sleeping on the couch for the night,” Louis informs everyone on his way up the stairs. “Is that okay with everybody? I promise he won’t eat your brains or whatever else it is you’ve convinced yourselves he’s going to do.”

“Er- Sure, Lou. That’s fine,” Liam agrees. “I don’t mind at all.”

Louis figured he wouldn’t. Zayn doesn’t answer right away, still eyeing the man at Louis’ side with distrust.

“Z?” Louis raises an eyebrow at his friend who has suddenly gone mute. “Is that okay?”

“Whatever,” he says before reaching for his pack of cigarettes and heading for the back door.

*

Upstairs, Louis shuts his bedroom door and rests the back of his head against it with a long sigh. Zayn’s mad at him. He wouldn’t admit it even if Louis confronted him about it, but he is. They’ve been friends since they were kids. They hardly ever disagree or argue about anything. Obviously, tonight is a different story.

Louis pushes away from the door, almost forgetting that he isn’t alone in the room from how quiet his friend is standing in an ocean of Louis’ junk. His green eyes follow Louis’ every move when he starts digging around for extra linens for him to use.

“I keep apologizing for my friends, but I really mean it when I say they’re not that bad,” Louis says. And they’re not. Niall loves everybody no matter who they are. He always has. Liam is slightly more guarded with his heart, but he has such a warm and accepting nature that it’s difficult for him to find faults in others too. People always think Zayn is the hard one. The one who’s cold and unfeeling when in reality, he’s probably the most sensitive and caring one of them all.

“I know it’s not your fault, but they’re just a little freaked out,” Louis explains as he grabs one of the pillows from his bed and hands it to the man. “They’re just scared because they don’t know you, but we can fix that,” Louis grins. “We know you can talk now and it’s just you and me up here so you don’t have to be shy. Can you tell me your name? I’d kind of like to have something to call you.”

Louis gets an enthusiastic response of nothing. Just silence.

“Okay. Maybe you don’t feel comfortable yet. That’s alright. Do you know my name, then?”

The man nods, the pleasantly deep timbre of his real voice filling the space between them.

“Louis.”

“Yeah,” he beams. “That’s me. Now, how about you? What’s _your_ name?” The man opens his mouth and closes it a few times, his brow furrowing like he’s unsure. “You can’t remember,” Louis guesses. Or maybe Niall was right and he simply doesn’t have one. “Well, that’s okay too. The beauty of names is that there are billions of them out there. You can always pick another one for the time being.”

Louis folds up the spare blanket in his hands so that it’s easier to carry and places it in the man’s arms too.

“What would you like to be called? You can choose any name you want. Whatever feels good,” Louis encourages him. The man blinks around Louis’ cluttered little room and then at Louis himself before his brow starts furrowing again. “Don’t worry. You don’t have to choose right now. Or I could help you out if you want.”

Louis glances around them too, his eyes landing on everything from the periodic table lamp on his bedside table to the dirty socks on his floor before he notices the mound of books piled next to the shelf that Louis has been too lazy to put back for months. They’re mostly books for work, their topics ranging from climate change to microscopic bacteria classification, but amongst them are some of his personal favorites too, even some he’s had since he was a child like _The Giver_ and _The_ _Chamber of Secrets_.

“What if I just call you Harry for now?” Louis suggests. He kind of looks like a Harry. He’s no Ron. He definitely isn’t a Draco. “Do you like that?”

The man seems to consider it for a moment before nodding his approval with a small grin.

“I like it too. Harry, it is, then,” Louis smiles. “Come on,” he gestures towards the door after he grabs a spare sheet from his wardrobe. “I’ll help you get settled in downstairs.”

Louis removes all of his and his friends’ belongings from between the cushions of the couch before pulling a white sheet over them followed by the soft knitted blanket his sister bought him a few years ago. He places the pillow at the end of the couch and then turns to Harry to invite him to climb in.

“The bathroom is just right upstairs if you need it, and of course anything in the kitchen is free game.” They finished all the stir-fry at dinner but there’s tons of snacks in the pantry. There can honestly never be enough food in their kitchen from four grown men with big appetites constantly rummaging through it.

“Are you going to be okay down here?” Louis yawns, grinning to himself when Harry answers with a spoken yes rather than a nod. “Okay. Good. Zayn’s room is down here and Niall’s is too. Niall is probably going to come in from the pub around three, but I’ll text him and remind him that you’re on the couch. Hopefully, he won’t wake you.”

Louis can’t think of anything else worth mentioning. Nothing else about the house anyway. 

“Um, also, I just want you to know that I called missing persons while you were in the shower. I didn’t get very many answers, but don’t worry because I’m going to try again in the morning. Hopefully, then we can get you back to your family. I’m sure they’re missing you like crazy.”

Louis just hopes he has more luck finding them tomorrow.

“Do you need anything else before I go?” Louis checks even though Harry looks comfortably tucked in. He shakes his head no, his green eyes standing out against the teal color of the blanket when he grins.

“Okay. Well, goodnight then, Harry. See you in the morning.” Louis crosses the living room and heads back towards the stairs. He freezes mid-step when he hears a soft ‘ _Thank you, Louis’_ from behind him. “Of course. Don’t mention it. Get some sleep,” Louis grins before he turns off the lights and continues up to his room.

*

Louis wakes up with his heart pounding and so disoriented from the loud bang that woke him that he rolls over to read the time and ends up rolling right onto the floor with a thud.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he whimpers, his side now aching all over again from the shoe he just landed on, however, the sound of someone banging on his bedroom door is so demanding that he doesn’t have time to be concerned that he’s broken anything.

He makes it across his bedroom on all fours, crawling over all the contents of his wardrobe before standing up and wrenching open the door. “ _What_?! Li, it’s past three o’clock in the fucking morning!” Louis exclaims. His friend only looks mildly contrite for waking him up.

“Listen, I’m sorry. And I know you were sleeping, but he just-”

He, as in, Harry? Louis’ stomach churns making him forget all about his ribs and his lack of sleep. God, he hopes he hasn’t done anything horrible like _actually_ eating one of their brains like Louis joked about earlier.

“Where is he? W-What’s happened?”

“That’s what I came to tell you, Lou. He’s fine. He’s downstairs,” Liam says with bright eyes that don’t fit the wave of anxiety rolling through Louis’ chest. “He’s _reading_ , Lou.” Louis blinks at his excited friend as he runs those words back through his head a few times searching for the part where somebody has had their head chopped off.

“You just pounded on my door in the middle of the night because Harry is bloody _reading_?”

His friend shakes his head, laughing at Louis’ annoyed expression. “Well, yes and no. You just- Come see for yourself, Louis, you have to. It’s incredible. Truly,” Liam says before taking off down the stairs again. The next thing Louis hears is Niall’s impatient voice asking if Louis is awake followed by a very loud and very rude, ‘ _Get your arse down here, Tommo! Hurry up!_ ’

Every light on the first floor is on when Louis rushes down the stairs to see what everybody is freaking out about. His housemates glance up at him when they notice him finally enter the room but their attention is only diverted for a moment before their eyes lock on Harry again where he’s sitting in the middle of the floor with nearly every book in the house surrounding him. He’s holding one in his lap that looks to be one of Liam’s medical anthologies when he grins at Louis standing on the bottom step.

“Hello, Louis,” he greets him brightly.

“Er- Hi, Harry. What’s up?” Louis takes a couple of steps forward, wondering why everyone is watching him with such astonishment. “Er- What are you doing?” Louis amends when Harry responds to his first question with a confused look up at the ceiling.

“He’s _reading_ ,” Niall answers for him with mirth dancing in his eyes. “I found him doing it when I got home,” he explains. “Go on, Harry. Why don’t you read some more?”

Harry takes Niall’s advice, cracking open the thick book in his lap to page one. His eyes take in the words so fast that he’s already turning the page before Louis can blink. He quickly turns all the rest of them in the book so rapidly his hand and the pages look like blades of a fan blurring before Louis’ eyes. Harry finishes when the hardcover of the back of the book slaps against the final page and then he places the thick anthology in the pile next to him with the other dozens of books he’s presumably read tonight.

Louis feels his mouth hanging open. He wants to close it. He also wants to ask what the hell he just witnessed, but he can’t find the words. “What did-? How-?”

Liam holds up one finger in a silent request for Louis’ patience. He crosses the room to collect his book and then turns to some random page in the middle.

“Ah, this is the best part!” Niall smiles. “Watch this,” he orders like Louis could bear to tear his eyes away for even a second.

“Harry,” Liam addresses him. “What are ephelides?”

 _“Ephelides are clusters of concentrated_ _melaninized_ _cells which are most easily visible on people with fair_ _complexion_ _s. They do not have an increased number of melanin-producing cells, but instead have melanocytes that overproduce melanin granules changing the coloration of the outer skin cells,”_ Harry proudly parrots back _. “Ephelides are most commonly known as freckles.”_

Louis blinks at Harry with his mouth still hanging open and then at Liam who was reading along the whole time he spoke.

“Is- Is that right?”

“It’s _verbatim_ ,” Liam laughs. “I’ve never seen anything like it!”

“I told you that’s best part!” Niall brags. “I fucking love it when he does that. He’s like Matilda or something, but _real_.”

Louis thinks about that and grins. He guesses Harry _is_ kind of like Matilda.

“So, he can do that with all the books?” Louis asks, marveling at the giant stack to Harry’s left.

“Every single one of them,” Liam confirms still smiling like Harry is the best thing he’s ever seen.

Actually, everyone in the room is currently looking at him like that. Everyone, that is, except for Zayn.

He hasn’t said a word where he’s sitting in the armchair not looking at all impressed with Harry’s super-speed or his photographic memory. In the midst of Harry turning out to be even more extraordinary than they all originally thought, Louis almost forgot that Zayn was even upset before. He doesn’t look any less upset now before wordlessly getting up and dismissing himself back to his room for the night.

“Don’t worry about him,” Niall tells Harry with a roll of his eyes. “We all think you’re cool even if you are probably an alien. He’ll come around.”

Harry nods but otherwise doesn’t seem too bothered by the fact that Zayn hasn’t warmed up to him as he grins and grabs a new book to memorize in thirty seconds flat.

*

Everyone gets a late start the next morning after hitting their snooze buttons way too many times and then finally forcing themselves out of bed. Zayn didn’t. He headed to work early despite their late night. With how fast he rushed out Louis would say his best friend is _avoiding_ him, but he hopes that isn’t true.

Niall who usually sleeps in the comfort of his bed is passed out on the living room floor with all the books Harry read and Harry’s blanket thrown over him. He was so exhausted after closing the pub and then becoming best friends with their new guest that everyone agreed to just leave him there once he finally crashed.

Louis is so tired that he’s practically dead on his feet so he calls into work to ask for the day off. He needs it anyway if he’s going to have any luck figuring out where Harry is supposed to be.

The smell of coffee lures Louis into the kitchen where Liam is yawning over a plate of eggs and delicious-smelling bacon.

“There’s more on the stove,” he says when Louis comes shuffling in. “And there’s coffee. Zayn made it before he left.”

“Bless you both,” Louis sighs as he pours himself a big mug and grabs a fresh plate. He swears under his breath when he sees the sinkful of dishes still waiting for him from last night. He’d rather rip off a limb right now than wash them; or at least bribe Liam into washing them before he goes to work.

“Hey, Li. Don’t you want to help me out with a little something?” Louis bats his eyelashes. He flops down in the seat across from Liam wearing the sweetest smile he can muster at seven a.m.

“That depends,” Liam shrugs. “Does it involve the enormous stack of dishes you conveniently forgot about until ten seconds ago?”

Louis doesn’t even answer him, rolling his eyes at his friend instead. “You could’ve just said no,” he mumbles ignoring the amused, ‘ _Now, where’s the fun in that_?’ that Liam quips right back. Louis crunches down on a piece of bacon in defeat as the sound of Niall’s snoring pours in from the living room. “Where’s Harry?” he asks when he realizes he hasn’t seen or heard him yet.

“On the back porch getting some fresh air. He eventually ran out of books to read so I gave him my laptop. I figured that would keep him occupied until you got up.”

“Did he ever go to sleep?” When Louis finally crashed Harry was still wide awake poring over Zayn’s engineering magazines.

“Nope. Not as far as I know, but he probably will soon. Niall tried to keep up and now listen to him snoring like a bear,” Liam smirks as he leaves the table to finish getting ready for work. “Oh, and I offered him some breakfast a while ago but he said he wasn’t hungry yet. I think he wanted to wait for you.”

The back door creaks open not even a minute later and Harry steps into the kitchen. He’s easily the tallest person in the room as well as the most awake with Liam’s laptop happily secured under his arm.

“Did you read the whole internet already?” Liam teases him.

“No. I can’t. No one can. It’s very comprehensive,” Harry answers a bit disappointedly making both Louis and Liam crack wide grins.

“I know. It was just a joke,” Liam assures him with a fond chuckle. Louis can’t tell if Harry is smiling because he gets the joke or if he’s just doing it because everyone else is when he takes the empty chair next to his.

“Good morning, Harry. Hungry?” Louis asks him.

He raises an eyebrow when Harry leans in to stare at something on Louis’ face. Gently, he runs the pad of his finger over the fine lines stemming from the outer corner of his eye and then smooths his thumb just above the apple of his cheek. Harry says something, but Louis’ heart is beating so loud in his ears that he barely hears it.

“You have ephelides,” he whispers a bit louder. “ _Freckles_.”

Harry is apparently delighted by this new realization, now inspecting the rest of Louis’ face for little imperfections. Louis feels his skin warming up under Harry’s fascinated touch and Liam’s bewildered smirk from watching them.

“Er- Yeah. I guess I do,” Louis says after Harry lets his arm fall back at his side. “But they’re really tiny though, so.” They’re almost invisible, really. No one besides Louis usually notices they’re even there. “Um…s-so breakfast?” Louis clears his throat to try and steer the morning back on track. “Would you like some? Liam made it,” he adds since Harry seemed to like what he cooked last night.

“Yes, please. And thank you,” Harry answers, his eyes still roving over his face in amazement.

Louis gets up to fix Harry a plate of bacon and eggs. He makes sure to pour him a tall glass of orange juice as well so he doesn’t have to make any loud demands like the last time Louis forgot to get him something to drink.

Liam glances at the clock on the wall after Louis reclaims his seat and Harry stops staring at him long enough to dig into his food. His housemate makes a flustered sound that says he’s going to be more than just a couple of minutes late if he doesn’t get a move on soon.

“Hey, Lou. I’ve got to go, but good luck with everything today. Let me know if you need anything. Anything at all.”

“Okay, I will, Li. Thanks.” Louis is grateful for the offered help and the well-wishes because he’s probably going to need them.

“And, Harry,” Liam addresses him next. “If you’re already back with your family by the time I get home tonight, just know that it was an absolute pleasure to meet you. Come back and visit us sometime, yeah?” he smiles before taking off up the stairs to finish getting ready. 

Louis is left alone after that, earning the privilege of watching Harry’s eyes brighten once he takes his first bite of bacon. He’s cute Louis decides, even with the grease from it glistening all over his fingers.

“Is it good?” Louis chuckles even though Harry is clearly enjoying himself.

“Mmhm,” Harry hums through a new mouthful. “ _Very_ good.”

At some point the snoring from the living room stops and Niall comes padding into the kitchen with bleary eyes and his hair matted down on one side.

“Is there bacon left?”

It’s barely even a question from how mumbled it is, but Louis still catches it.

“Yep. It’s on the stove.”

“Thank God,” Niall sighs. He doesn’t bother with fixing food at the stove, choosing instead to place both pans at the center of the table and grabbing the used plate in front of Louis because it’s easier than getting a new one. At least that’s one less dish for him to clean later.

Niall sits down next to Harry with half-lidded eyes. He narrows them at him after noticing how much more alert he is than Louis and himself. “What time did you finally go to bed?” he asks.

Harry seems to think about Niall’s question but he doesn’t respond. He’s too busy experiencing the sugary joys of orange juice for what must be the first time ever from the pleased sound he makes once he tastes it.

“He didn’t,” Louis answers for him, also wondering how it’s possible for Harry to look so cheery after reading through hundreds of thousands of pages last night.

“Maybe aliens don’t sleep,” Niall smirks with a playful nudge to Harry’s side.

“He’s not an alien,” Louis sighs with a roll of his eyes even though with all the miraculous evidence piling up against Harry, it’s getting a lot harder to believe that he isn’t. Maybe he’s just too excited about being in a new place to sleep just yet.

“So, what are you two getting into today since you’re not going to work?” Niall asks as he licks his greasy fingers clean rather than using a napkin. Somehow, it’s not quite as endearing as when Harry does it.

“Uh, I actually wanted to talk to you about that…” Louis winces. “I kind of need to take care of some things today and I was hoping since you love me and I’m your favorite and you and Harry get on so well that…”

“Well, technically Harry’s my new favorite,” he corrects him. “But say no more, mate. I’d be happy to hang out with him,” Niall agrees easily. “I don’t mind, but I’ll need a nap at some point. I don’t even know how I’m awake right now.” Niall smelled food and his stomach realized he wasn’t eating any of it. That’s pretty much how it always happens.

“Harry?” Louis turns to him watching him grab another couple of bacon slices to add to his plate. “Do you think you’ll be alright here with Niall until I get back? It should only be a few hours.”

Louis gets a happy nod as an answer which is more than good enough for him. The worst that could probably happen is him and Niall eating themselves into food comas which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing for either of them.

He takes a picture of Harry before he leaves, thankful his phone is still intact after basically taking a bath in water samples the night before. Louis leaves Harry in the trusted care of Niall who is already sleeping again on the couch by the time Louis is dressed and walking out the door. Harry isn’t of course. He’s content just sitting in the armchair with Liam’s laptop until Niall finishes his nap.

“Niall won’t sleep _all_ day,” Louis assures him before he goes.

Harry grins over at Niall sprawled out on the couch and snoring again. “I know. He’s just tired,” he says.

“Yeah. He’ll be up soon, but remember that my number is right on the table if you need me,” Louis tells him even though he’s sure Harry had it memorized the moment he saw it.

Louis waves Harry goodbye and almost makes it out the door before a soft _‘Louis?’_ makes him stop.

He turns to face Harry again who looks almost nervous to have called Louis back as he gently chews at his bottom lip. “Yeah, Harry? Is everything okay?”

Harry nods but it still takes him a few seconds to voice what he’s thinking so hard about.

“Do you really think I have a family out there? Because I do if you do, but, I can’t really remember them so I’m not so sure?” Louis did not expect him to say that. “I don’t really remember anything before a few days ago, actually,” Harry admits. “Nothing before the woods.”

Louis doesn’t know what to say with those hopeful, green eyes pinned on him. He doesn’t want to give a definite yes and get Harry’s hopes up even more when Louis isn’t sure about his family either. Harry probably has parents or siblings who are alive. He may even have a significant other who is currently losing their mind trying to find him, but there’s no way to know for sure.

Harry looks like he regrets asking when Louis doesn’t immediately answer so Louis pastes on a big grin to help ease his worries.

“If they’re out there, I’m going to find them,” Louis promises him. It’s really all Louis can do for now until he finds out more.

It seems like a good enough and vague enough answer for Harry because he gives a quick nod and pastes on a small grin of his own in response.

Louis says goodbye again once Harry turns back to his laptop, his eyes focused on the screen like he never said anything at all. Louis closes the door behind him with his stomach crawling uncomfortably. He really hopes he didn’t just tell Harry a lie.


	2. Chapter 2

Louis realizes that this is going to be a lot harder than he thought once he gets into his car and realizes he has no real destination in mind. He’s not sure where to start so he heads to the police station he called the night before even though they’ve already said no one who looks like Harry was reported missing. Several hours have passed between then and now though, so it’s possible his visit to the station will result in a different outcome.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t. Even showing Harry’s picture doesn’t help, although the station does agree to keep it on file and post it online for anybody who may be looking for him.

It’s discouraging that Louis gets the same reaction everywhere he goes. First, people look at him like he’s crazy, next they tell him that they can’t help, and then in the end they suggest some other place for him to go try just to repeat the process. So far, he has been to three police stations, every hospital in the city, and for one scary moment in which he actually prayed he’d get no results, the prison where thankfully no tall, curly-headed inmates had been reported as escaped.

According to city records, no one has ever heard of Harry. No one recognizes him and he doesn’t exist. It’s like he just materialized out of thin air which Louis knows to be false because he found Harry confused and wandering around at the lake. He had to get there somehow and he knows it wasn’t by fucking spaceship or light beam like Niall often jokes. Louis promised to come home with answers and the only place he hasn’t tried to get some is the place where it all began.

Louis pulls over on the highway and wedges his phone out of his back pocket. He holds his breath as he dials the one person he needs right now who always knows what to do when Louis doesn’t. He waits and waits for that person to pick up his phone.

Nothing.

He lets out a frustrated huff before squaring his jaw and dialing the bastard again knowing he’s probably doing nothing right now but sitting in his office.

Zayn picks up this time, his voice coming off as annoyed for no reason other than his brooding session being interrupted.

“I’m at work, Lou. What is it?”

“Hi, to you too,” Louis mumbles into the receiver. Zayn has always been an expert pouter when he wants to be, but this is taking it to the next level. It’s been hours and he’s still mad. Eventually, he hears Zayn sigh and then offer the apology he knows he should give Louis.

“I’m sorry. That was pretty rude. What’s up?”

“It was,” Louis agrees. “Listen, I need your help with something and you’re not going to like it very much, but I kind of need you to suck it up and do it anyway.” His best friend says nothing so Louis quickly names this huge favor, hoping Zayn will just go with it. “I need you to meet me at the lake.”

Louis barely gets the words out of his mouth before Zayn is turning him down flat.

“No. Absolutely not. I am not helping you do anything that involves that place or the random person you decided to bring into our home on a whim.”

“Well, I’ve tried everything else! Do you have any other ideas of figuring out who he is because I can’t think of any,” Louis snaps at him. “I know you don’t like him, but just- _Please_? Help me do this one thing, Z. The last time I went there alone I ended up face planting off the side of a fucking hill in the middle of the night.” His side still aches from that. Falling out of bed last night probably didn’t help matters.

The line goes silent for a while until he hears another of Zayn’s annoyed, chastising huffs in his ear because he didn’t know Louis fell.

“ _See._ That’s exactly why people don’t go out there anymore, _especially_ alone. You could’ve really been hurt,” Zayn barks down the line at him. “You should’ve just waited like I said but you’re so fucking stubborn sometimes.”

“Yeah, I know,” Louis agrees, letting his best friend get out all of his ‘ _I told you so’s’_. He knows he probably shouldn’t have gone out to the lake, but he shudders to think about what would’ve happened to Harry if he hadn’t.

“You’re such an idiot,” his best friend continues. “Going out to toxic sites alone. Picking up strangers in the fucking woods.”

“I know, I know,” Louis sighs in agreement once again because he does know. It was dumb. But he doesn’t regret it in the slightest. “Are you done being my dad now?” Louis grins to himself.

“ _No_. Never,” Zayn scoffs though his hard exterior soon melts away leaving behind a man who pales at the sight of spiders in his bedroom and cries watching Pixar films though he never admits it. “I’ll meet you in an hour.”

Louis can hardly believe his ears. He knew Zayn would say yes to him because it’s not like he could ever really say no, but it’s still nice to hear him give in without a fight. Or without much _more_ of a fight.

“Yes! Thank you, Zayn! You’re incredible!” Louis praises him before giving it some thought. “Well, you’re actually a prick most of the time, but you more than make up for it during the times you let me win.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Zayn mumbles. “Shut up before I change my mind.”

He won’t, which is precisely why Louis adores his lovable, stubborn prick of a best friend so much.

*

“I fucking _hate_ the woods.” Louis rolls his eyes as Zayn continues his rant about the outdoors that he started a whole twenty minutes ago when he ruined his new white converses by sinking them into a puddle of mud. “My feet feel disgusting. This is why I love my job indoors and in my office. I don’t understand how you can enjoy being out here.”

“You can buy new shoes, Z.”

“I’m not buying anything. And I don’t _want_ new shoes. I want these that I’m wearing and I’d prefer them with _out_ river muck.”

“For the last time,” Louis sighs. “This is a _lake_ , Zayn. This is _lake_ muck.”

“It’s fucking muck! Does it really matter which kind?”

 _Yes_. Actually, it _does_ matter, but Louis knows better than to say so right now.

He hears the distinct sound of skin slapping against skin behind him; the tell-tale sign of Zayn swatting at more of the bugs and mosquitos that wouldn’t be nearly as attracted to him if his cologne from this morning wasn’t so fragrant.

“And speaking of the toxic lake you love so much, why are we not looking at it yet? We should’ve been there by now,” Zayn grumbles.

That’s because they’re not going to it.

Technically, Louis didn’t find Harry at the lake. He only came across him by accident when he got himself lost in a part of the woods he’d never been in before. Louis didn’t even know that area existed until last night.

“I told you I got turned around while I was out here. Harry wasn’t by the water. He was further out.”

“Any further out and we’ll end up walking off the face of the bloody continent,” his best friend says under his breath as he dutifully stumbles along. Louis ignores him and keeps going.

He found that place in the dark last night, so naturally nothing looks familiar in the light. There is no path out here to follow so he’s just going off instinct. All Louis sees are tall trees followed by more compact clusters of tall trees. But, the incline of the ground they’ve been trudging along is gradually getting steeper which is a good thing because Louis had to have fallen from somewhere.

“I didn’t agree to mountain climbing, you know,” Zayn informs him once they make it to the top of the giant hill that isn’t present on any sort of map that Louis has seen of the area. It’s a long way down from where they’re looking out over the small clearing that Louis crashed into the night before. “I also didn’t agree to be out here all day looking at nature. I know I said I’d help and all but so far all we’ve done is hike and sweat and-”

Zayn stops talking when Louis slaps a hand over his mouth and points to a tall figure down below expertly navigating its way across the clearing. Louis had assumed he and Zayn were the only two people out here, but he had hoped to find someone else. Someone who might know something about Harry.

They stand there until the person can no longer be seen as well through the leaves and branches.

“Should we follow them?” Zayn asks after Louis finally removes his hand from over his mouth. Louis doesn’t even answer, already moving to safely climb down and do just that.

“B-But, you don’t know who that person is or what the hell they’re doing way out here. What if they don’t even know Harry,” Zayn argues.

“What if they do?” Louis counters.

That person could be out here looking for him for all he and Zayn know. Maybe he and Harry were camping and got separated somehow and Harry couldn’t remember how to get back to their site. What Zayn said is a possibility too. This person may not even know who Harry is, but it’s unlikely. No one comes this far out by accident unless they’re lost and the person they just saw didn’t look lost. Someone that self-assured must have some answers, and luckily, Louis has lots of questions.

“I’m going.”

“ _Oi! Wait for me!”_ Zayn hisses when Louis wastes no time making his way down the other side of the hill.

The person they are following is so far ahead of them now that the sound of Zayn stumbling through the thick brush and the sound of Louis shushing him for being such a klutz goes completely unnoticed. The person who looks to be a man doesn’t stop walking, and although he and Zayn have no clue where they’re headed, they don’t stop walking either. Not until their leader slows down in front of a tiny concrete building tucked into the trees on the other side of the clearing.

It’s so small and so well-concealed that Louis isn’t surprised he missed it on the night that he found Harry wandering around not very far from here. This must be where he was staying. This person they’ve followed who seems to be out here searching for someone too must know Harry or at least know of him because Louis’ sure it’s no coincidence that they’re here again.

“I’m just going to go introduce myself and explain what happened last night,” Louis informs his friend. He takes a step from behind the safety of the tree line but Zayn snatches him back by his wrist. He covers Louis’ mouth with his hand, his brown eyes wide with fear as Louis follows the path of his gaze to the gun in the man’s right hand.

Louis sucks in a deep breath watching as the man checks on both sides of him before typing a series of numbers into a panel on the front door. He checks around him again before stepping inside and pulling the thick slab of concrete shut behind him.

Zayn removes his hand from Louis’ mouth once there is no longer any danger of Louis getting them both killed by startling the person who clearly doesn’t want to be bothered.

“We need to leave right now. We shouldn’t be here,” Zayn whispers. Louis doesn’t necessarily disagree. They’re not supposed to be here.

“What do you think this place is?”

Zayn scoffs at his question. “Who the fuck cares? It’s obviously a place where someone didn’t want to be found or have visitors. It’s none of our business, Lou. Now, let’s just go.”

Louis knows he should probably listen. Whatever he’s gotten them into is way bigger and much more dangerous than he thought, but he can’t just leave. Not when Harry is counting on him.

The thick door slides open a couple of minutes later and the man with the gun steps out. He locks the place up again using the same code that Louis strains his eyes to be able to see. The man checks around him again like someone might show up before pulling out his phone and walking back the way he came.

“Hey. It’s done. There’s no sign of it anywhere,” he says just as he unknowingly passes Zayn and Louis hiding in the trees. “I don’t know but there’s nothing out here to sustain it,” he continues in answer to whomever he’s speaking to. “It’s been almost a week. It probably crawled off and died. With any luck, it’s currently floating to the bottom of the lake.”

The man disappears into the trees on the opposite side of the clearing and Louis breathes freely for the first time in minutes. He turns his attention back to the door where no one else comes out so he assumes the place is empty.

“I have to go in,” Louis says at the same time that his best friend suggests they get the hell out of there.

“What do you mean you have to go in there? No, you really, really don’t. Did you not just hear that guy? There’s something roaming around out here in the fucking woods that he _hopes_ is dead. I don’t want to find out what the hell _it_ is and I really don’t want to be eaten on the off chance that it’s alive.”

That man must’ve meant Harry. Louis has no idea how anyone could wish such an ill fate on someone as lovely as Harry, but clearly, someone wants him gone.

“I’m sorry, Zayn, but I have to,” Louis shrugs, giving his friend an apologetic squeeze on the shoulder as he heads for the little building. “You can wait for me at the car if you want,” Louis suggests. “Hopefully, I won’t be long.”

“Like hell I’m leaving you out here,” he says as he reluctantly hurries after him.

The panel on the door is simple enough made up of only numbers. Louis thinks back to the code he kind of half-witnessed the man type out, but when he tries to replicate the sequence nothing happens. He tries it again, pressing a three at the end instead of a six in case he got that part wrong but the door doesn’t budge.

“Fuck. I can’t remember the last part. I thought it was three or six, but.” He sighs, now he’s questioning whether he confused some of the other digits too.

“It’s both. It’s eight-four-nine- _three-six_ ,” Zayn says as he flawlessly types out the sequence causing the tight door latch to release.

“You are a life saver. Remind me to thank you later,” Louis smiles.

“Just don’t get us murdered out here,” Zayn retorts. “That’ll be thanks enough.”

Louis nudges the door open praying there’s no one inside to catch him and Zayn trespassing on whatever the hell this place is. It’s easy to see that it’s empty once they step inside. The fluorescent lights flicker to life above them once Louis hits the switch, illuminating the deserted room in a sterile glow. Louis’ first thought is that there should’ve been a window.

Abandoned research equipment that must be worth millions litters the workspaces against the walls, but for some reason none of it is being utilized. Several large blank spaces on the desks indicate the removal of computers and technology that once sat there now leaving behind only dustless shadows.

It’s impossible to tell exactly what kind of work was going on in here, which Louis figures was the whole point of wiping it clean. Everything about the place looks fairly normal as far as labs go. Everything, that is, except the giant tank in the center of the room.  

It’s capsule-shaped and filled with a strange, clear mucus that Louis assumes is too thick to support a school of tropical fish or anything else that would require so much room. The tank is big enough that Louis is positive that he could climb in and comfortably lie down. Not that he wants to of course.

“What the hell is that thing?” Zayn frowns as Louis steps closer to get a better look. “Don’t touch it,” Zayn scolds when Louis runs his fingers over the cool glass.

A long tube extends from one end of the tank but whatever was being fed through it or was connected to it is long gone. There are other tubes stemming from the tank too, one of which has a clear connector piece that Louis is almost certain he’s seen on oxygen tubes.

The rest of the room offers very little in terms of clues, but even without them it’s obvious that _something_ was living here and being watched. The evidence of what the hell that was has been erased, but Louis hopes whoever did so left behind something useful that might give him some answers.

“Now what are you doing?” his best friend demands after Louis steals a sample of the mucus with one of the test tubes on the shelves and then leaves the tank to start rifling through the room.

“There must be something more here. Something they missed or- or left behind maybe,” Louis mumbles mostly to himself. There just has to be.

Zayn comes to stand next to him as he searches through bare drawers.

“There’s nothing, Lou. Whoever ran this place made fucking sure of it.”

Louis knows this, but he keeps looking anyway.

“Lou,” Zayn tries again. “I’m telling you that the information is gone, okay? There’s _zero_ paper trail. Not even a notebook. You probably couldn’t even find the end of a bloody flash drive in h-here.”

Zayn’s sentence tapers off when Louis smiles at him with a perfectly intact flash drive between his pointer finger and thumb that he just found stuffed under a bunch of tiny cords that lead to nowhere.

“Let’s go,” Louis says making sure to close the drawer and put everything back where it was.

Zayn doesn’t protest when Louis starts heading for the door. He takes one more look around before hurrying after him, shutting off the lights, and slapping Louis’ hand away from the door panel because he still can’t remember the code.

“Thanks, mate. What would I do without you?” Louis grins after the door is locked tight again. Zayn only fondly rolls his eyes.

“You’d probably get caught doing incredibly stupid, dangerous shit and end up in jail or worse?”

“You could’ve just said _you’re welcome_ ,” Louis mutters.

“Yeah, probably,” Zayn smirks at him. “But where’s the fun in that?”

*

Everyone, including Louis’ boss, Rachel, raises an eyebrow when he and Zayn come rushing through the front door together an hour later.

“I thought you were sick?” she says, making a face at the state of their mud-soaked clothes.

“I was. I mean I _am_ ,” Louis says with a cough and fake sniffle. “I just forgot something in my office. That-That Zayn has to help me find because he’s immune. We’ll only be a second. Technically, I’m not even here, so cheers,” he smiles before pulling Zayn into his office and locking the door behind them.

“You are a terrible actor,” Zayn informs him like he doesn’t already know that. “Did you seriously just _sniffle_?”

“Shut up and help me with this.” Louis clicks around on his laptop, only growing frustrated when nothing happens. “Damn it. There’s something wrong with the flash drive. I can’t get anything to open.”

“That’s because someone didn’t want you to open it. It’s encrypted,” he mumbles over Louis’ shoulder with interest. “Move over. Let me do it.”

Louis gets shoved out of the way and he moves to shove Zayn back but he decides to strike later when he doesn’t need his best friend to open his stolen, top-secret files for him.

It takes several minutes as well as several commands for Louis to stop making Zayn nervous by ‘ _hovering_ ’ before Louis looks over from where he’s busying himself staying out of the way and sees that Zayn has an actual document opened up on his screen.

“What is that?”

“Don’t know. Some kind of project summary?” Zayn gets up to give Louis back his chair and pulls another one over so he can see too.

“It’s called _Parent Trial_ ,” Louis reads over the scanned hand-written document dated from nineteen-eighty-seven.

“The parent trial of what exactly?” Zayn frowns.

A fetus as far as Louis can tell. He frowns as he scrolls through the notes about some baby named _A_ and its mother who was rumored to have had an abnormally long gestational period lasting over nine months. Louis doesn’t understand what that means for the child until he comes across the name Einstein and realizes baby _A_ is short for Albert. The hand-written document theorizes that Einstein had exceptional intelligence as an adult because his brain had longer to develop while in utero.

He clicks through some of the other files and opens one called _Trial One_. His skin crawls as he reads through the recount of a failed experiment to prolong one woman’s pregnancy to last ten months instead of nine. She died from complications and so did the child, resulting in the pregnancy being labeled unstable.

There was another attempt a couple of years later even though the first didn’t work out. In order to keep the same thing from happening again, in trial two the mother was given experimental drugs to keep her from going into labor. The baby lived for a short while after she was born, but she didn’t even make it a week. The mother didn’t make it past delivery.

The final attempt to create a healthy child with exceptional intellectual abilities makes Louis’ stomach churn after he opens it because the first thing he sees is a diagram of a large incubation pod that looks exactly like the tank he and Zayn just saw in the woods. The past attempts left both mothers dead from complications and the child in each trial died from similar complications soon after leaving the womb. This new trial was supposed to eliminate those factors by removing the mother and the womb altogether.

A new fetus was created through an experimental version of in vitro fertilization where the embryo was never implanted anywhere. As it grew past nine months, the fetus showed higher brain activity than the average person who is thought to only access a small percentage of it. The child from _Trial Three_ showed real promise of possessing exceptional intelligence and abilities, but no one could agree on how to safely extract him from the pod without it resulting in death like the trials before. They didn’t want to risk it so they left him in artificial utero in the hopes that he’d develop even higher brain function and use.

Louis closes the document that doesn’t really explain what happened with the child from _Trial Three_ but he opens a random cease and desist request near the top of the list that tells him everything he needs to know about the lab’s funder whose research facilities went under and couldn’t afford to keep the project running any longer.

The last thing Louis opens is the most recent document saved which is a saved email confirming that the lab was indeed wiped clean and that the project had been terminated. Louis closes the lid of his laptop once he gets to the part about how the subject was expelled from the incubation pod outside of the lab and assumed too weak at the time to live on his own so they left him for dead.

“I can’t believe they left him in there for over twenty years and then they just- they just _abandoned_ him,” Zayn whispers at his side, his voice thin and his face pale like the thought of it is too hard to stomach. “God, and I’ve been such a dick to him.”

“If I hadn’t gotten lost out there and taken him away from that place... If- If Harry had still been there today when that man came back to look for him…” Louis can’t even say it. It’s too terrible to think about.

Louis snatches the flash drive out of his laptop like it’s poison.

“Wait. What are you doing? Don’t throw it away,” Zayn frowns when Louis dangles it over the trash bin.

“Why not? I’ll just tell him we didn’t’ find anything. I’m not letting Harry see this.” Louis wishes he didn’t even see it. His job today was to find out if Harry had a family out there looking for him. He can’t go back there and tell him that he never had a family, he was technically just born and abandoned, and the only person out there looking for him had a pistol in his hand meant to finish the job.

Zayn rests a comforting palm against Louis’ back. “Lou, I know it sucks and you want to protect him, but you can’t lie to him about where he comes from. He deserves to know.”

Louis knows in his heart that Zayn is right, but he really wishes he weren’t.

*

The air outside their house smells like freshly-delivered pizza when they arrive home which can only mean one thing; it’s Niall’s night for dinner.

“I’m starving. I sure hope Niall remembered to get a veggie pizza for Li. He nearly had a cow last time he was forced to eat only cheese with me. Apparently disliking broccoli is a fucking crime,” Zayn rolls his eyes. He freezes where he was just about to open the door when he notices Louis still hasn’t said anything.

The ride from work was silent. Louis could feel his best friend’s worried eyes on him the whole time like he wanted to check in on him but he never did. He let Louis think on his own which is really all he wanted.

“Lou? Are you alright?”

No. He’s not. “I just want to get it over with,” he sighs instead of admitting that he still thinks it’s best to just lie and say he found nothing.

“I’m going to be right there with you, okay? You don’t have to do this alone.”

Louis appreciates that. He doesn’t think he _could_ do this by himself. He’s sick just thinking about it.

He gives Zayn a nod when he raises an eyebrow with his hand still on the door knob. Louis takes a deep breath when he steps inside, his somber expression twisting up into confusion when a chorus of raucous cheering erupts from the floor when Liam and Niall have Harry practically pinned down from their excitement over…a Fifa Live match Louis guesses?

“Finally! Where the hell have you two been?! Harry has been kicking everyone’s arse since _noon_! A guy in Seattle cried because he’s never lost before. It was amazing.”

Harry pops his head up wearing a face-splitting grin. “Hi, Louis! You’re back,” he beams, making Louis almost forget that he has bad news to deliver.

“Hey, Harry,” he waves back. He wishes he could just let him be as happy as he looks right now forever. Louis glances over at Zayn in a silent plea that gets instantly vetoed with a stern look of his own. “Harry, could I talk to you for a moment?”

He manages a nod with Liam and Niall hanging off of his shoulders, his eyebrows furrowing a bit when Louis explains that it needs to be in private. He’ll let his friends know what he and Zayn found out, but it’s only fair that Harry gets to hear it first. It’s about him after all.

The bright smiles on Liam and Niall’s faces disappear when Harry stands up wearing a pair of Niall’s joggers and a hoodie that’s way too short for his long torso.

“What’s going on?” Liam asks realizing that something’s not quite right.

“Er- It’s nothing,” Louis assures him with a fake grin. “I just need to talk to Harry for a bit. _We_ just need to talk to him,” he corrects when Zayn grabs Liam’s laptop lying on the coffee table. “We’ll only be a minute.”

It’ll probably take less than that considering how fast Harry reads.

It takes even less time than Louis anticipated once Zayn pulls everything up. Louis hadn’t known what exactly to say when they walked up to his bedroom. In the end, he just said he was sorry and that what he found out was difficult to explain before placing the computer in Harry’s lap.

In under five minutes he’s done reading through the files that took them over an hour to get through. Louis can tell when he reaches the end because his eyes are no longer following along with the words on the screen. They’re still and sad and Louis hates seeing them that way.

“H-Harry?” he tries, wishing there were something he could do. “Are you alright? I’m really sorry.”

Slowly, Harry closes the laptop, finally meeting Louis’ eyes. Harry’s are green and just as beautiful as Louis thought they were when he found Harry in the middle of nowhere. When Louis couldn’t understand why he felt such a need to protect him. It’s like his heart just knew he needed a friend.

“That’s why I’m so different from everyone else.”

Louis clears his throat as he nods. “Yeah, a little bit, but being different isn’t a _bad_ thing, Harry. All the best and most brilliant people are a little different.” He gives Harry a little grin hoping to coax one out of him too but it doesn’t work.

“So, I guess I don’t have a family after all. Not like other people do,” he says after a heavy silence that stretches on.

Louis blinks down at his hands unsure of what to say to comfort him. Harry has biological parents somewhere, but a family? People who know him and love him and who would be appalled to learn how horribly he’s been treated?

He doesn’t expect it when Zayn reaches out to grip Harry’s hand. Harry blinks up at him like he didn’t expect it either, but he doesn’t pull away.

“Yes, you do,” Zayn tells him. “You have _us_. We’ll be your family if you want.”

Louis nods when Zayn subtly widens his eyes at Louis for him to agree. “Of course we will. We’re a family already. We all take care of each other,” Louis shrugs. “Now, lucky for us that includes you too,” he grins.

No one says anything for a while which may be a good thing considering the bomb they just dropped on Harry but the silence makes Louis nervous that Harry isn’t okay.

“Harry? What are you thinking? How do you feel?”

“Really tired,” Harry admits on the end of a sigh. And for the first time since Louis has known him, Harry actually _looks_ tired.

“Of course you are. I bet you’re exhausted. Did you ever get to sleep?” Harry answers with a shake of his head. “You can lie down in here. We’ll all let you get some rest and have a bit of privacy,” he says as he forces Zayn up by the arm. “Stay in here as long as you want. We’ll all be just downstairs if you need something.”

“Okay. Thank you,” Harry says before lying down on his side with Louis’ pillow tucked under his head.

Zayn turns to him as soon as the door closes behind them. “Should we stay with him? Do you think he’s alright?”

“Um, I think he can still hear us talking about him through the door,” he mutters, remembering that super-speed isn’t the only extraordinary ability he possesses.

Louis gathers everyone and leads the way out the front door, paying their confused faces no mind when he ushers them to Liam’s car parked outside.

“Is there a reason why we’re sitting in my car instead of inside like normal people?”

Louis sighs, gearing up and preparing himself to talk about this situation all over again. “Yes,” he answers. “It’s because Zayn and I have to tell you what we found out today.” And Harry doesn’t need to hear it twice. It was probably awful enough the first time around.

“He really isn’t human is he?” Niall asks like he’s assumed as much all along. Not that it matters to him. “I was only joking when I said he was an alien. He knows that right?”

“He knows, Ni. And he _is_ human,” Zayn clarifies. “It’s just- It’s the _how_ and the _why_ he was created that’s fucked up.”

It is. It’s so fucked up. Louis couldn’t agree more.

It takes a lot longer to explain everything to Liam and Niall than it did to explain it to Harry. They have about a billion questions each but unfortunately Louis doesn’t have many answers beside what’s on the flash drive. In the end, it’s unanimous that Harry should stay right where he is with them for as long as he wants, though it’s not like Louis expected any other outcome. Harry’s family now. Zayn said so himself.

It’s getting late when the boys decide to follow Niall to the pub for his shift. Everyone needs a couple of drinks after the evening they’ve had, but all Louis can think about is crashing so he gratefully stays behind.

No one has disturbed Harry since they left him up in Louis’ room. Louis doesn’t want to disturb him now either, so he grabs his blanket from the living room floor where Niall left it and drapes it over the couch for himself. If anyone deserves a real bed tonight, it’s Harry.

Louis tiptoes up the stairs when he remembers he needs to brush his teeth. He tries to make as little noise as possible even skipping the squeaky step at the top as he continues past his own bedroom. He makes it to the safety of the bathroom door and releases the breath he’d been holding when he pushes it open. Louis sucks another one into his lungs again when he steps in to find Harry curled up inside the bathtub.

He’s finally asleep which is more surprising than the odd place he decided to crash after over twenty-four hours of being conscious. He couldn’t sleep on the couch last night. He got up, taught himself to read, and started consuming every book in the house to keep himself occupied instead. Louis figured he’d be more comfortable in a room all by himself tonight so he gave Harry his own, but it turns out the bathroom is where he actually wanted to be.

It makes sense Louis guesses. After spending all that time asleep inside of a huge tank it’s probably difficult to fall asleep anywhere that isn’t a giant glass container or a giant porcelain bowl in this case.

The position he’s curled up in looks painful, but Harry looks incredibly peaceful with his deep, even breaths. Louis gets his blanket from downstairs and drapes it over Harry so he has at least that to keep him warm from the cool surface of his makeshift bed.

Louis doesn’t know what else he can do to make him more comfortable, but he seems okay for now. He remembers to run in and grab his toothbrush from the cup before he finally tiptoes out, leaving Harry to get the rest he so desperately needed.

Louis crashes in his own bed after braving Niall and Zayn’s bathroom downstairs to brush his teeth. He sends Liam a quick message informing him of the sleeping boy in their bathtub so he doesn’t come crashing in later on and waking him up. Louis also makes sure to leave his bedroom door open in case Harry wakes up in the middle of the night anyway and needs something.

He yawns into his pillow, so tired and mentally exhausted that he’s already half-asleep. He mumbles a quiet goodnight to no one at all since the house is virtually empty. It’s unlikely that Harry can hear him right now with him being unconscious and all, though, with a super genius like him and his amazing abilities, maybe it’s not so far-fetched.

Louis will just have to ask him tomorrow.


	3. Chapter 3

Two Months Later

“Haz, come on! I need to get in there!” Louis shouts over another round of persistent knocking on the bathroom door. If he’s going to make it to work on time, Louis has to get in the shower within the next two minutes and Zayn is probably going to strangle them both if he doesn’t get to shower at all because of them.

It’s usually not this crazy in the house. Well, that’s a lie considering there are now _five_ of them all crammed together in one place, however, usually there isn’t as much shouting going on. It doesn’t help matters when the downstairs bathroom is currently being occupied by Niall who had a few too many complimentary drinks from patrons at work last night and now the upstairs bathroom is being hijacked by Harry who thankfully had enough sense to _not_ drink himself into oblivion like Niall, but still sleeps like a fucking rock.

“Harry, _please_?” he begs. “Just let me in for five minutes and then I promise you can go right back to sleep.”

“Uh, no he can’t,” Zayn says as he comes marching up the stairs in a pair of shorts and an armful of toiletries he rescued from his and Niall’s bathroom. Zayn looks ready to fight him for shower rights even though this isn’t even his shower. And judging by the tragic state of Zayn’s hair right now, if it actually came to violence he’s pretty sure Zayn would win.

“Harry!” Louis tries even louder. “Get out of the tub! Niall’s on the floor downstairs so there’s a nice, comfy tub down there just waiting for you to-”

Louis swallows down the rest of that sentence when the bathroom door swings open. Harry has never really gotten used to the concept of wearing layers of clothing during the day and nighttime hasn’t proved to be much different. Right now, he’s wearing nothing but a sleepy grin as he scratches over his muscled chest.

He slides off the giant pair of headphones Louis got him to block out the sounds of the world as he dozes and hits pause on whatever he fell asleep listening to last night after he and Niall stumbled in. Louis briefly glances at the screen of Niall’s phone, not at all surprised to see Harry’s playlist of Tchaikovsky’s symphonies on repeat.

“Good morning. Did you say something earlier? Sorry. I couldn’t really hear.” Harry gestures down at the phone in his right hand and like a fool, Louis looks. It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before, especially in Harry’s case since he was stark naked the night they met, but it’s different when Harry is a super genius who has been a part of regular society for months and yet he still insists on slinging his dick around every chance his gets.

“I- Uh- I was just. The shower. I- Good morning.” Louis feels his cheeks heating up as Harry’s brow furrows, his head slightly tilted as he listens to Louis stumble over every word that leaves his mouth. Luckily, Zayn intervenes before Louis can completely embarrass himself.

“Okay, this is cute and all, but I really need to get in the shower and that can’t happen until Lou does. So, not to be rude, Haz, but get out. And for fuck’s sake, put this on so Louis can string two thoughts together and stop gawking.”

So, Zayn did _not_ help out like Louis thought he was going to. Bastard.

Zayn snatches the towel Louis is holding out of his arms and tosses it in Harry’s direction. Harry unfolds it with a bored yawn and wraps it around himself inches below his slim hips.

Any lower and he may as well have just stayed nude.

“I’m sorry, Lou. And to you too, Zayn. I’ll try to wake up earlier next time. Excuse me.” He yawns again before stepping out of the way. Louis feels his whole body stiffen as Harry slides past him, his belly-buttonless stomach brushing right over Louis’ forearm. “Hey, has anyone seen Niall?” he asks. “I should go give him his phone back.”

“Yeah, he’s the idiot blond one dying from a hangover on the bathroom tile. You can’t miss him,” Zayn rolls his eyes.

Louis watches Harry zip down the stairs, his eyes focused on the impressive definition in Harry’s broad shoulders that are even more toned than before because lately he’s been going to the gym with Liam. He looks good in general. Like some kind of gorgeous sculpture carved from a flawless marble that Louis shouldn’t even be looking at.

“Louis, do you know what bloody time it is?” Zayn flicks his ear. “Stop drooling and go shower. Or, if you want to stay here and drool, move out of the way so _I_ can go shower.”

“What? I- I’m not _drooling_ ,” Louis scoffs. “I just looked at him. I didn’t even say anything!”

Zayn’s mouth hardly moves but Louis still catches the ‘ _Didn’t have to_. _Your face says it all_ ,’ he mumbles under his breath.

“Fuck off,” Louis tells him from the safety of the bathroom where he can’t be easily tackled. His best friend doesn’t even seem to mind.

“Just hurry up. I want to shave and wash my hair at least,” Zayn complains. Louis slams the door closed behind him, removing Harry’s blanket from the bottom of the tub before he steps in and turns on the water.

It’s cold at first so he makes his shower extra warm and twice as long hoping there’ll be no hot water left after he gets out. It serves Zayn right because Louis wasn’t _drooling_ over anybody. He wasn’t.

Louis rushes downstairs in search of food as soon as he’s dressed. His hair is still damp and he tripped over a shoe at the bottom of the stairs a second ago, but he’s here and in one piece, so cheers.

“No, I understand. I just don’t get it,” Harry tells Niall who is surprisingly still alive after spending the morning clutching the toilet bowl. Harry is sitting across from him with a slightly furrowed brow watching as Niall shoves greasy food down his throat.

There’s not much breakfast left Louis notices as he snatches a piece of toast from the plate on the stove and shoves his hand into the cereal box between them for a fistful. Louis’ chewing a mouthful of sugary marshmallows when he starts digging through the fridge for some jam. He pauses briefly when he hears Niall respond to Harry’s statement.

“No, you’re totally right,” Niall mumbles in agreement, not even waiting until after he swallows his food. “Being naked is ace. It’s no doubt one of the best feelings in the world, but I guess it just makes some people feel uncomfortable.”

Harry hums into a piece of toast as he contemplates this. “But, that makes no sense. We’re born without clothing. How can nudity cause discomfort when it’s our natural state? If that’s the case, then shouldn’t we feel the most comfortable _without_ clothes on?”

“You’d think so, but I have no idea, mate. Who knows? Maybe some people don’t like it because it reminds them too much of sex? I’m thinking people can get into some pretty awkward situations that way, so that could be a reason.”

Harry doesn’t disagree however he still looks skeptical. “But that doesn’t really make sense either,” he frowns. “Not when sex is something else that is completely natural.”

Niall shrugs, unable to come up with a good counter argument for that so he turns to Louis for help.

“Well, what do you think, Lou? What’s up with people always hating on harmless nudists like our Harry here?”

Louis looks up from where he was just quietly smearing strawberry jam over his toast and pointedly not saying anything. He glances over at Harry who is leaned towards him in interest, still as unabashedly naked as he was when he got kicked out of the bathroom. He looks amazing all the time, even now with pieces of his sleep-mussed hair sticking out from his messy bun. He’s wearing nothing but the towel Zayn made him put on earlier and the knowledge of that makes the pit of Louis’ stomach flutter in a strange way that he’d much rather ignore.

“Er- _Me_? Oh, I don’t really… I mean, I’ve never. Er- No comment?” Louis tries.

Niall blinks at him like he’s lost it, and Harry; stupidly gorgeous Harry with his jawline and his abs that are always accented by a sharp v-shape visible on either side of his hips. Louis stuffs his strawberry toast in his mouth to keep from actually drooling like Zayn so rudely accused him of earlier, because it’s just Harry; even if his physique is fucking unreal.

“Wear clothes,” he mumbles through his breakfast. “Clothes are good,” Louis finally decides on before stealing Niall’s half-empty mug of coffee making a beeline for the living room to find his keys.

“See!” Niall cackles in delight. “It’s the sex thing. Told you, Haz.”

“It is _not_ a sex thing!” Louis shouts over his shoulder, instantly regretting it when Zayn breezes past him into the kitchen and raises an eyebrow.

“What’s not a sex thing?”

“Having to cover up all the good bits,” Niall explains. “Harry was just asking why we bother with clothes at all and I said it’s a sex thing.”

“With Louis these days it’s _definitely_ a sex thing,” Zayn smirks as he takes the seat next to Harry and accepts the cereal bowl he slides in front of him. “With me, it’s not about that. It’s just a simple fact that first thing in the morning, the only dick I need to see is my own. No offense of course. I’m sure yours is lovely,” Zayn says, offering Harry a playful grin that turns annoyingly smug when he aims it at Louis still standing in the doorway. “Right, Lou?”

Three pairs of eyes lock on him; his two best friends’ alight with amusement and Harry’s looking more curious than ever because Louis’ cheeks are turning pink and he doesn’t seem to get the joke. Louis is sure Liam would be sitting there staring too if he were here. Thankfully, he left for work early and generally doesn’t live to torture the hell out of him.

“I’m leaving now and I hate you all,” he informs the room before turning on his heel. He stops when he hears a bright, familiar voice call out to him.

“Goodbye, Louis! Have a good day!”

Louis feels his frown turning up into a grin despite his willingness to smile right now. Harry’s genuine nature often has that effect on people. More specifically on him.

He turns to face Harry and watch his dimples appear on either cheek when Louis returns his good blessing.

“Thanks, Haz. You too. I’ll see you later,” he promises, pointedly ignoring the way Zayn and Niall smirk at one another. All that matters right now is Harry who was sweet and thoughtful enough to wish him a good day like he does every morning regardless of whether he’s stark naked at the kitchen table or not.

*

When Louis gets home from work that night he gets exactly five minutes to collapse on the sofa and rest before his housemates force him up to go change clothes because apparently they’re all going out for drinks tonight, and no, Louis can’t just stay in.

Figures.

“Uh, I’ll just drive myself. I’m not even drinking, so,” Louis says side-eyeing the cramped interior of Niall’s car. Back when there was only four of them, carpooling wasn’t an issue but now that they’ve adopted Harry into the family, the insides of cars have become quite crowded. More so for Louis than anybody else because somehow he’s _always_  exiled to the bloody middle seat.

“Tommo, get your arse in this car,” he hears Niall sigh from behind the wheel.

“Yeah, Lou. Hurry up and squeeze it in here with everybody else’s,” Zayn snickers.

“I don’t know, Z, with those jeans he might not make it,” Niall teases back with a dubious glance at the tight black denim Louis chose for the evening, the pair of them clearly dishing out payback for all the complaining Louis did earlier this evening.

“Oi, leave him alone. I think his jeans look nice…” Liam graciously pipes up from behind Louis to take the heat off him. Thank God at least one of them isn’t being annoying as shit. “They’re very _well-rounded_.” Zayn stretches his hand out of the passenger window at that to share a traitorous fist bump with Traitor Liam and Louis swears he feels his eyes roll to the back of his head.

“Alright, now I’m _definitely_ not getting in this car,” Louis scoffs. He refuses to put up with _that_ shit all night. “And why do I always have to be in the middle? Why can’t we rotate?”

Niall sighs again, letting the back of his head hit the headrest in his impatience. “Because everybody knows the smallest person goes in the middle, Lou. It’s like, carpool law or something,” says the person who’s _maybe_ two centimeters taller than him and Louis’ convinced that’s mostly due to hair. It’s bullshit is what it is, but everybody is giving him flat looks for complaining about it yet again, so he decides to save them all ten minutes worth of griping and just gets it over with. They’d probably tackle him if he tried to run to his car anyway.

Louis climbs in next to Harry to a chorus of ‘ _Finally’s_ ’ and ‘ _Thank God’s_ ’ as Liam quickly climbs in after him. With much difficulty, Louis buckles himself in fighting for space so hard that he accidentally elbows Harry in the arm as Niall backs them out of the drive.

“Shit, Haz. I’m sorry,” he apologizes, though Harry doesn’t seem to mind. If Louis was going to elbow anybody in this car it should be a collective blow to Liam, Zayn, and Niall for being annoying as fuck.

“It’s okay, Lou. It was just an accident,” he assures him, grinning at Louis in that remarkably sweet way of his that just makes Louis want to hug him. “And, I like your clothes,” he quietly tells him after a beat. His voice is low yet loud enough that everybody stills hears it. “I think you look very handsome.”

Every head in the car snaps up or whips in their direction. Harry’s compliment was a much nicer way of expressing his regard for Louis’ outfit than anybody else in this car and yet they all stare at them with devilish smirks.

“Oh. Um. Thanks, Harry. You too,” Louis says, grateful that it’s nighttime so no one can see the results of all his blood rushing straight to his cheeks. He’s also grateful that Harry is wearing clothes at all considering his very _free_ state of being this morning.

“ _Aww_. ‘ _You too’,_ ” someone coos under their breath. It’s Zayn. Louis is almost certain of it, which is why he doesn’t hesitate to smack him in the back of the neck to shut him up. Unfortunately, it only serves to amuse him more.

Louis rolls his eyes at the two-year-old in the passenger seat he calls his best friend. “You are _so_ buying me a drink once we get there. _Several_.”

“Thought you weren’t drinking,” Zayn mocks.

“Well, I am now,” Louis quips back. He’ll need to drink being stuck with these idiots all night. Minus Harry of course. He’s always lovely.

The five of them drag themselves back home around three in the morning after Niall kindly helps close up even though he wasn’t even working. He’s also the official designated driver since everyone else has been drinking. Louis doesn’t help anybody do anything. He’s so tired when they leave that he doesn’t even complain when he’s forced to the middle seat. It’s actually quite cozy.

The five of them march into the house and deposit themselves all around the living room; Zayn in the armchair as usual, Niall sprawled out on the floor, Liam using Harry’s thigh as a pillow stretched out over the sofa cushions, and Louis tucked up against the other sofa arm with Harry’s warmth boxing him in. Still cozy.

It’s late. Much too late to be starting a film tonight, but they do it anyway giving into Liam’s drunken pleading to watch The Notebook like they haven’t all seen it a million times. Well, all of them except for Harry whose brow furrows at the name of the title because he’s never heard it before.

“Don’t worry. You’ll like it,” Louis assures him with a playful elbow to his side. Though, there aren’t very many movies that Harry _doesn’t_ like because they’re all learning opportunities for him. He goes into films knowing nothing and then comes out an expert on whatever it was about which recently includes two other languages thanks to his new love of foreign films.

“He’ll probably be asleep in ten minutes just like the rest of us,” Zayn pipes up from the armchair, already yawing as he checks the time on his phone.

“No one’s going to sleep. We’re all watching,” Liam orders just as Niall hits play.

Zayn’s prediction wasn’t too far off the mark when he said they’d all pass out. Liam, the one who was the most insistent on everyone staying awake, goes first quickly followed by Niall whose face is currently half-pressed to the floor. Zayn made it about twenty minutes in before he drifted off, his leather jacket posing as a makeshift blanket tucked under his chin as he movie plays on.

The last two people standing are Harry who has hardly blinked since the film started and Louis who has hardly blinked watching Harry completely mesmerized by what’s happening on the screen.

His brow held a small crinkle in the beginning trying to find the connection between the old couple and the young one, but it soon disappeared and his face has held nothing but fascination for them ever since. Every kiss leaves him a bit more captivated than the last and by the time they’re torn apart from one another and then fatefully reunited he’s in tears. None of them fall down his cheeks. Not until the very end when he realizes they truly loved each other for their entire lives. From start to finish. Beginning to end.

Louis can’t help smiling to himself as he listens to Harry quietly sniffling. He isn’t a blubbering mess like Liam and Niall always are at the end. Zayn usually sobs too though he likes to pretend otherwise, but Harry isn’t like that. He’s honest and he’s truly melting Louis’ heart right now because until tonight he doesn’t think he’s ever seen Harry cry, and somehow his romantic heart just makes him even more beautiful.

“Haz,” he whispers, offering him a sympathetic grin when Harry tears his eyes away from the end credits. They’re glassy and more brilliantly green than ever. “We should probably go to bed. And also wake the others. They’ll hate us if we leave them like this.”

Harry glances around the room for the first time in almost two hours noticing everyone else is already asleep. He inhales deep and then releases it, nodding in agreement as he scrubs the collar of his shirt over his cheeks to dry them.

Telling the others to go get in bed goes about as well as Louis could’ve predicted based on past experience. They grumble about being conscious and they’re confused about why they’re being herded out of the living room like cattle, but don’t argue once their heads hit their pillows.

He and Harry start up the stairs after they make sure the television is turned off and the house is locked up. Louis gets to his bedroom first and looks over his shoulder at Harry on the way to bed too.

“Goodnight,” he yawns, frowning when Harry answers with something much different. He has stopped walking, now standing in front of Louis with this pondering expression on his face that seems a bit out of place for the late- _early -_ hour.

“But… it’s all just fiction though, right? Love’s not really like that?” he asks.

Louis blinks in surprise, confused at first about what Harry is even talking about. “You mean the couple from the movie?” Harry nods and instantly Louis draws a blank on what to tell him. How should he know what it’s really like? He’s never been in love. “Uh…Sorry, Haz. I’m probably not the best person to ask.”

He’s literally the last person Harry should come to. The other boys are much better suited for talking about this with all their combined experience with love and the like, but unfortunately, they’re all asleep and probably will be until at least noon. Louis doesn’t want to send Harry off to bed with nothing with something clearly weighing heavy on his mind so Louis gives it his best shot.

“Er- I’m not really sure, but I think maybe it can be?” Harry hums thoughtfully though it’s an answer that doesn’t exactly make the little crease between his eyebrows go away. “There’s different ways to love, but I think most people would like to have a love like that,” Louis explains. “I think we’d all be lucky to love somebody in our lives the way they did.”

He can practically see the wheels in Harry’s mind turning as he mulls it over. “I’ve read about love between people,” he reveals. Louis isn’t surprised. Harry reads about everything. “I didn’t think that kind existed, but I’d like to, I think. To be in love like that,” he clarifies as if just saying the words is enough to make it happen. Louis’ lips turn up into a grin picturing Harry in love. He was technically just born two months ago and already has goals to be one of the most epic couples ever.

“I’m sure you will one day. Your Allie or Noah is out there,” he chuckles.

Someone somewhere will be that lucky person who loves him back. Louis has no clue who that will be. He just hopes they accept Harry wholly and completely and they appreciate the amazing person that Harry is because he so deserves it.

Harry takes a moment to soak that in, his brow smoothing out as he decides Louis’ answer may have some merit.

“I think you’ll fall in love one day too,” Harry grins back.

Louis doubts that’s happening anytime soon. “Yeah, Haz. Maybe,” Louis agrees through another big yawn. He steps forward to wrap Harry in a tight hug. “I’ll try to find true love if _you_ promise to get some sleep,” he laughs. “The sun’s coming up.”

“Ok. I will. I promise,” he smiles. “Goodnight, Lou.”

“Goodnight.”

He watches Harry leave to go curl up in his bathtub with his playlist of classical music, fondly shaking his head because whoever does end up being the one for him one thing is for sure; they’ll never be bored.


	4. Chapter 4

It’s a few weeks later when Louis gets home from work with two armfuls of Chinese food and the peculiar feeling that he has missed something due to the lack of people vaulting over the furniture to get to the eggrolls first. There aren’t people doing anything at all. No one is in the living room or in the kitchen which puts Louis on edge even more because the five of them practically live beside the fridge especially around mealtimes.

“Um, hello?” he calls out only to receive no response. It’s Louis’ night for dinner and admittedly he is a tad bit late because he stayed behind to finish up some things in his office. Maybe everyone simply got tired of waiting for him and went out. Or perhaps Harry and Niall got too hungry so they resorted to combined cannibalism and wiped everyone out. Honestly, with the way they eat, Louis wouldn’t be surprised.

Louis puts everything down on the kitchen table and digs his phone out of his back pocket. He’s got a missed call from his sister, a text from Liam saying he’s staying late at the hospital tonight, and one from Niall explaining that he, Zayn, and Harry are on the way home and that they have _big_ news. Whatever _that_ means.

The last time someone in the house had big news to share it was about two weeks ago when Liam and Niall brought home a random puppy they claim had been lost, however, she turned out to belong to someone else a few blocks over so all the excitement was relatively short-lived. Louis sits down at the kitchen table with a weary sigh and begins snacking on an eggroll to pass the time, certain his housemates are about to waltz through the door with a stray something the size of a baby bear.

The three of them arrive home ten minutes later. Louis awaits the sound of a muffled meow or a bark but all he hears are his housemates’ excitedly talking over each other as they round the corner. Their energy only multiplies once they notice all the food.

“Thank, God,” Niall says, already digging through bags like he hasn’t eaten in a month. Zayn isn’t much better, frowning when Niall slaps his hand away from the container of eggrolls on the table.

“Um, hi,” Louis says over their bickering, kindly reminding the room that he is in fact alive and present while the children in the room move onto fighting over a box of sesame chicken.

He gets two distracted grunts in response and a bright ‘ _hello_ ’ from Harry who isn’t behaving like a barn animal when he takes a seat next to him at the table to wait out the battle.

“So…” Louis begins, grimacing at the giant bites his housemates are taking. “Someone said something about some kind of news or-?”

“ _Big_ news,” Niall corrects him through a mouthful coincidentally making a _big_ mess because he isn’t even using a plate.

“Yeah, mate. Don’t look at us. Talk to Harry,” Zayn tells him. “It’s his news.” Louis didn’t peg Harry as the type to smuggle in stray pets, but truthfully, being best mates with Niall has probably done more harm than good. It was only a matter of time.

“Oh? Okay, then. What’s up, Haz?” Louis asks turning to face Harry who looks so ready to talk his face is practically one big grin.

“I got a job at the pub!” he announces in a burst of energy that’s more than understandable now that Louis knows what has him looking so proud.

“That’s so great, Harry! Congratulations!”

Niall and Zayn stop stuffing their faces long enough to applaud their friend’s success too because that’s not just big news. It’s amazing. Harry preens under all the praise, his cheeks flushing a bit from everyone’s support.

“Well?” Louis playfully nudges him in the side. “Tell me the whole story. How did this happen?”

“Well, it wasn’t really me. It was all Niall,” Harry admits, but Niall doesn’t seem to agree. He shakes his head to deny having a helping hand.

“I didn’t do anything,” he shrugs. “Kev didn’t show again last night and then he quit this morning so when everyone started freaking out about finding a replacement bartender at such short notice, I simply told them not to worry because we already have the perfect one right here!” he says with an annoying yet oddly proud yank on Harry’s bun making a few more curls fall out of it though Harry doesn’t mind one bit.

He really is the perfect choice for taking Kev’s place. During the day, Harry spends most of his time at home while most everyone else is at work. Liam is there with him sometimes depending on his schedule, but Niall only works nights. He and Harry usually head out to his shift together after a boring day of being cooped up inside the house, just happy for a chance to be with people. Harry loves it there and he’s going to love being a member of the pub family too.

“Niall asked if I’d be interested in maybe working there earlier today and I said yes, so when Zayn came home he drove me to the pub, and now, I work there!” he beams.

“That’s amazing, Haz. When do you start?”

“Tomorrow night. Niall and Lisa are training me.”

Louis couldn’t be happier for him. Harry doesn’t always feel like he fits in with other people because he’s so different, but this will definitely help. “I’m so excited for you and I know Liam will be too,” he assures Harry. Actually, Liam will probably be jealous because he has always wanted to steal Harry away and take his genius, encyclopedic brain to work with him. Though, a walking and talking medical database would probably raise more than a few questions about his origin, lack of a last name, family, or birth certificate, so thankfully Liam has refrained from doing so.

“We should all come see you once you’ve gotten the hang of it,” Zayn suggests. “It’ll be fun. We’ll come beg you for free drinks like we do to Niall whenever he’s working.”

“Which never fucking works,” Niall mutters.

“I already know all of your favorites,” Harry shrugs like getting them all smashed is the only logical next step.

“Exactly, mate! See, Ni. It’s like the universe _wants_ it to happen,” Zayn agrees over Louis’ quick reminder to the room at large that Harry literally _just_ got this job and would probably like to keep it.

“But, you’ll come too. Right, Louis?” comes a concerned voice next to him.

Louis grins at Harry thinking he wouldn’t miss something like this for the world. The pub isn’t really his scene and they all know it, but he’d be happy to make an exception for this. For Harry.

“Of course I’ll be there, Haz,” he chuckles, watching the bright smile return to Harry’s face. “They’re gonna have to kick me out.”

*

Showing up to support Harry in his newest venture sounded like something they’d all do a in a couple of weeks after Harry broke a few hundred glasses and fucked up some food orders; things that never actually took place because Harry has super reflexes, agility, a super memory, and a dazzling, super smile that easily make him the best bartender The Rum House has ever had.

They all go see him in action the next Saturday when both Harry and Niall are working and Liam is free from saving lives for the evening. The Rum House is as charming as ever when they walk in with its sticky floors and thick air being recycled through its old vents, but something about it feels different tonight. Most likely due to the amazing new guy working behind the bar that people are clamoring to get to even though the other side of the bar has far less of a crowd.

Liam, Zayn, and Louis jump into the thick of it, just as eager to get to Harry as everyone else here. Louis expects a long wait while the crowd thins but they’re up at the bar in no time causing Harry to gasp aloud when he sees them.

“You’re here!” he shouts leaning over the countertop to wrap Liam, Zayn, and finally, Louis in crushing hugs. Louis laughs at such a warm welcome, and also at the way Harry’s long curls practically whack him in the face with the scent of coconut mixed with fried pub food.

Harry pulls back looking so thrilled to have them there, shaking his head like he can’t believe they really showed up.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d be able to make it,” he shouts over the noise of all the patrons, quickly leaning in once more to hug them one by one.

Zayn fondly rolls his eyes and then playfully pushes Harry away. “Of course we came out to support you, Haz. We’ve been looking forward to this all week.”

“We have,” Liam nods in agreement. “And clearly we’re not the only ones. This place is insane tonight. I’ve never seen it this packed before.”

“That’s because we’ve never had someone as amazing as Harry keeping the customers so happy before,” Niall shouts, sidling up next to Harry to smack a loud kiss to the side of his head. Louis glances at the tip jar next to them more than impressed with how full it is already when Harry just got here a couple of hours ago. 

“Yep. They come for the drinks but personally I think they stay for the dimples,” the other bartender, Sean, teases but without all the obnoxious kissing. That’s not to say Sean looks as though he’d particularly mind it; just shy perhaps.

Harry doesn’t seem to notice. He just quietly grins to himself under so much attention and praise. He almost looks to be blushing before skillfully changing the subject to something that isn’t him. “Would you guys like something to eat? Drinks maybe?” he asks once his coworkers head back to their own workstations.

“Drinks definitely,” Zayn answers already digging out his wallet to start a tab. He begins rattling off his order and like magic he’s presented with a tall pint of Guinness and a shot of tequila before he’s even finished his sentence. Zayn blinks down at the quick materialization of alcohol before him realizing Harry did that so fast he didn’t even see it happen. “Fuck, I always forget you can do that,” he smiles down at his perfectly poured drinks and stuffs a wad of cash into Harry’s tip jar.

Liam looks equally impressed with Harry’s speed and efficiency until he takes a guarded look around at all the people who aren’t them.

“Haz. You don’t do that often, do you?” he asks under his breath. “You know,” he says with a significant raise of his eyebrows. “Use your… _abilities_.”

Harry’s face screws up at how stiffly Liam’s mouth shapes the word and then he bursts into a fit of giggles clearly finding Liam hilarious. It’s an active effort on Louis’ part to not poke him in the dimple when Harry leans in toward them to give his answer.

“Well, I do sometimes,” he reveals. “But whenever I do, no one really notices except Niall.” Niall who isn’t even looking at them right now, too busy flirting with a group of girls he’s making drinks for to notice any sort of hyper-speed service happening on Harry’s end of the bar. “Is- Is that okay?” Harry frowns, doubt starting to creep in when Liam, Zayn, and Louis exchange silent glances.

It’s not like Harry is doing anything wrong and it’s not like they don’t want him to be himself, because they do. Harry is a remarkable person and his abilities are remarkable too. It’s who he is. There’s just no guarantee that everyone else in the world will be as accepting as the four of them.

Sadly, Louis already knows of at least one group of terrible people who call themselves scientists who wanted him erased from existence entirely. He doesn’t want to scare Harry though, especially on a night like this when he looks so happy and proud of himself. Harry is safe and as far as Louis can tell all anybody here wants from him is his attention and a flash of that charming smile. And honestly, who could blame them?

“I think it’s more than okay,” Louis says with an easy grin when Harry looks to him like always for his opinion like it somehow carries more weight than all the other boys’. “Just be careful, yeah?”

“I will, Lou. Don’t worry,” Harry promises.

As if to prove his point, he gets to work making drinks for him and Liam but does it the ‘normal’ way. He takes his time with it and even lets a few drops of beer slosh out onto the countertop like a person without super-human reflexes would. Louis fights a grin watching Harry work as slow as he thinks looks normal, even though fulfilling those two drink orders would’ve taken the average person much longer. It’s no wonder their line moved so fast when they first arrived.

“There you are!” he smiles sliding Liam’s mixed drink with an umbrella in it and Louis’ cold beer to the edge of the bar. “Two normal drinks prepared at a normal pace.”

“Yeah, normal by Usain Bolt standards maybe,” Zayn mumbles, but everyone still catches it. Harry’s sensitive ears definitely pick it up as well making his brow furrow because he has no clue who that is.

Louis stomps on Zayn’s foot for his snark, not even blinking when Zayn howls and then rounds on him in retaliation.

“They’re _perfect_ ,” Louis says to quell Harry’s concerns and avoid looking at his best friend. “Thanks, Haz,” Louis says as he and Liam shove even more money into his tip jar for his stellar service.

At the rate he’s going, he’s going to need a much bigger jar. Perhaps he should just upgrade to a bucket.

*

Louis keeps his word about being at the pub so long he needs to be kicked out. They all do, hanging out in their booth around three a.m. while Niall, Sean, and Harry finish closing down the place. It’s been a long night for everyone, but it has also been a fun one getting to watch Harry in his element and just having fun. Normally, he’d be right here in this booth with them. That’s exactly where he ends up once his shift is officially over; burrowed in next to Zayn who’s so drunk he asks Harry what he’s doing here like the bar area was some prison holding him hostage, and Liam sitting across from Zayn who cackles like that was the funniest thing he’s ever heard and then asks Harry the same question.

It’s past time for them to go home, so they all make it a team effort to get their drunk friends safely to Niall’s car. They put Zayn in the passenger seat after his diva demand to control the radio and they stuff Liam in the far corner of the back seat where he can nap. Louis already knows the middle seat awaits him after Liam is settled against the far door, but out of nowhere, Harry steps around him to take his place with an, “I’ll sit in the middle, Lou. I don’t mind.”

It’s a kind offer, but one that Harry didn’t have to make. “No, Haz. You don’t have to do that. And anyway, I think you’re too tall, mate,” Louis says watching as Harry ducks and slides over to the middle section anyway. 

“It’s comfy here,” he grins after he’s all buckled in. “I’m not too tall.”

He _is_. His legs and feet remind Louis of a baby giraffe’s with how awkwardly they’re straddled on either side of the middle console, however, it was such a sweet gesture made even sweeter by Harry pretending to not be miserable.

“You’re kind of my hero, you know that, right?” Louis laughs, reveling in not being squished. He thinks maybe Harry does know that. Or at least, he’s smiling like he does.

When they get home, none of them make it very far past the kitchen for midnight- _three a.m.-_ snacks. Exhaustion hits sometime around the second plate of fresh bacon being passed around the table and Zayn pouting because someone whose name sounds like Dial ate the leftover pizza he was saving in the fridge.

They take up residence in the living room as per usual rather than heading to bed like they all know they should. “Let’s watch a movie,” someone suggests. Probably Niall since the voice came from the vicinity of the floor he’s sprawled out on.

“Deadpool!” Zayn proposes which is quickly seconded by Liam.

Niall says he has no preference so Louis shrugs, resolved to watch whatever too until Harry speaks up next to him.

“Um, can we maybe watch The Notebook again?” he asks hopefully. “I really liked it last time.”

Zayn instantly groans in his armchair claiming he’s seen that movie six-hundred-gazillion times. Which is in fact _not_ a real number or possible but no one points that out. Liam jumps ship rather quickly, now fully backing Harry’s Notebook request, and it’s not like Louis could deny him anything after so bravely tackling the middle seat of Niall tiny car. He deserves medals. Possibly even gold stars. The least Louis can do is back him up.

“The Notebook it is!” Louis announces, watching Liam cheer and Zayn hang his head back so far it looks painful.

“But it’s so fucking _sad_!” he whines. “Ryan Gosling’s just plain depressing but Ryan Reynolds is hilarious. Don’t you all ever just want to laugh instead of watching sappy shit?”

Louis glances around the room and sees nothing but happy and content faces at the prospect of watching another sappy love film. “The Notebook is sweet and romantic and you, my friend, are severely outnumbered, so, no. We don’t,” Louis says with a smug grin. It stays right on his face when Harry zooms out of the room and returns in the blink of an eye to cuddle into Louis’ side with his blanket from upstairs.

Louis’ glad Harry didn’t do _that_ at the pub. Thankfully, he wasn’t nearly as excited then as he is right now to watch his new favorite film.

“You’re not tired?” Louis laughs. Harry’s been working since late this afternoon. It’s a miracle he’s even conscious right now.

“Not yet. I’m good,” he says through a small yawn that totally gives him away. It gets cut short when the movie starts, all traces of exhaustion gone and replaced with a nostalgia that Louis can’t help but find adorable. It’s the same rapt expression he wore tonight each time a couple entered the pub bathed in that special light that Harry has become so interested in as of late.

He’s so focused on the opening scenes that he hardly even blinks. Louis means to pay attention too, but there’s no way he can. Louis’ lucky to even be aware of the rest of the world with Harry leaned so comfortably against him. The film is just background noise. Harry is what he can’t look away from.

“Thank you by the way.”

Louis watches Harry’s lips mouth the words. It only occurs to him to blink away from them staring when Harry turns toward him without warning. “Er- What?” he says as casually as he can, hoping Harry didn’t just catch him staring.

“You know,” Harry grins at him. “For voting for my movie. I know you’ve all seen this a thousand times,” he clarifies when Louis frowns unable to think of anything worth thanking him for.

“No, H, I love this movie,” Louis assures him. “It was no trouble.”

“I know,” Harry whispers. “But still. I guess you’re kind of like my hero too.”

Louis can feel himself blushing long after Harry turns his attention back to the screen which is dumb because Harry hasn’t even done anything. All he did was look at Louis and give his forearm a soft squeeze beneath the blanket as always, but hearing him say that makes Louis feel warm inside and a little dizzy in a way he’s never experienced. It’s like he just stood up too fast when he hasn’t moved at all. Neither of them has, and yet Louis swears his world is spinning.

“Always, Haz,” Louis says giving his arm a sure squeeze in return. He pushes down the violent lurch his heart just made nearly forgetting that they aren’t the two people on screen no matter how much Louis kind of wishes they were. It's a dangerous little thought. One that forms in the back of Louis' mind that he knows he shouldn't even be having, and yet he doesn't stop it from happening. He just sits there feeling his stomach flutter each time Harry smiles or cries at the screen, wondering when the exact moment was that he started falling for one of his best friends and how he managed to fucking miss it.

_Fuck._


	5. Chapter 5

There’s a steady beat moving alongside the concerto currently flowing through Harry’s headphones that only serve to block out the noise of the world. It’s off-rhythm and the frequency of the pounding is much too quick for the sweeping melody playing meaning it could only be coming from somewhere else. The door Harry realizes when it raps again forcing Harry’s eyes open, finally conscious after slowly being pulled from sleep.

His joints pop when he sits up, the porcelain of the bath tub nice and cool against his skin. He stands and steps over the edge of it onto the fuzzy blue mat now tickling the soles of his feet. The knocking starts back up again just as Harry pauses the playlist on his new phone that boys bought him as a gift, the rhythm of the banging fast-paced yet polite in a way that lets him know Liam is the one who needs to get inside.

“Hey, Haz! Morning,” Liam greets him before kindly sidestepping him into the bathroom. “I’ll just be a second. Sorry,” he assures him just before shutting the door behind him, leaving Harry on the opposite side of it where things are a lot more interesting, like the smell of eggs and coffee wafting up from the kitchen for instance or sight of Louis rushing up the stairs while experimentally looping a black tie around the collar of his open shirt with Zayn right at his heels with an assortment of other ties in one hand and a mug of coffee in the other as they bicker over which color is best.

To Harry, any of the ties would look nice so bright and colorful against Louis’ white shirt, though he’s still very much lost on their actual purpose. Society’s preoccupation with clothing remains a mystery to him even after four months of living in it. He can’t believe it’s already been that long.

“Good morning!” Harry greets them.

Both of them stop arguing and turn in the direction of his voice. “Morning!” Zayn offers, accidentally splashing coffee down the front of his own outfit and nearly mowing Louis over in the corridor when he suddenly stops walking altogether. “ _Lou, what the fuck_?” he complains, but Louis doesn’t seem to be listening. His wide gaze is locked with Harry’s, traveling the length of his bare torso until it gets stuck somewhere below his hips.

Zayn rolls his eyes when he notices and gives Louis a hard shove in the back that makes his entire face flush red. Louis manages a stammered ‘ _good morning’_ before Zayn rolls his eyes again and ushers Louis into his bedroom like he’s a danger to others.

“Towels save lives. And shirts,” Zayn fondly reminds him, gesturing to his freshly ruined work clothes.

He hadn’t mean to cause such a fuss. All he did was wake up. “Sorry, Zayn,” Harry offers just before he and Louis close the door and start bickering all over again.

Harry grins at their attempt at a hushed conversation as he walks past on his way down the stairs. From a moral standpoint, it’s unfair to listen in on them and he often tries not to listen in on his housemates at all, but it’s difficult to _not_ hear Zayn sniggering at Louis on the other side of the door and Louis promising to disown him as his best friend if he doesn’t shut up and help him dress like an adult. This is why Harry loves mornings best.

Things are much quieter downstairs with just Niall puttering around the kitchen and singing to himself as always. He cuts his song short when he notices Harry shuffling into the room.

“Ah, there you are. Missed you last night. Lisa and Sean say hello by the way,” he says in lieu of good morning like all the other boys. Niall takes a seat with a plate of breakfast piled high on top of it. There’s a second, equally delicious-looking plate waiting in the empty place next to him that Niall points him towards.

“Is that for me?” Harry’s stomach growls in hopeful anticipation of a yes.

“Yep,” Niall affirms with a cursory, unbothered glance over Harry’s bare skin just like everyone else in the house. Well, everyone except for Louis, that is. For some reason, nudity seems to offend him the most.

“Li and Zayn already ate,” Niall continues. “I tried getting Lou to slow down and have some after he hijacked our bathroom but he’s got that big meeting thing that got moved up to today so he’s gone all weird and mad scientist-like,” Niall smirks. “Zayn’s wrangling him in now.”

What Niall and the others perceive as Louis acting strange is what Harry knows to really be a case of stress and nervousness.

“I think he’s just worried about his presentation. And also his sister coming to visit,” Harry adds, remembering that there’s more than one important thing happening today contributing to Louis’ anxiety. Harry hasn’t said anything, but he’s a little anxious about a member of Louis’ real family visiting too. He met both of Liam’s parents about a month ago and Niall’s brother a few weeks before that but Harry never really felt nervous about them. Not like he does about today.

“He’s got nothing to worry about,” Niall says through a forkful of hash browns and eggs. “He’s the smartest person we all know besides you.”

Harry thinks Louis is highly intelligent even without being compared to someone like himself whose intelligence was engineered by other people. People who were just as smart and clever as Louis who singlehandedly figured out a solution to saving the lake that he cares so deeply about. Harry’s not denying that the scientists who created him were brilliant, because they were, but none of them could ever hope to be half as amazing and kind as Louis. Niall’s right. He has nothing to worry about.

Liam comes back downstairs a few minutes later with clean teeth and his hair looking a lot more orderly than it had a few minutes ago when he woke Harry up. He’s tailed by Zayn who is now wearing a clean shirt and no longer chasing his best friend with neckties.

“Did you end up killing him?” Niall chuckles when he notices Louis is missing from the bunch.

“Not yet, but it definitely crossed my mind a few times,” Zayn says as he stops by the coffee pot for a refill.

“He’s just nervous. He thought he had the weekend to prepare,” Liam chimes in which is the same thing Harry said earlier in Louis’ defense.

The very person they’re speaking of comes jogging into the kitchen not even ten seconds later wearing a pair of grey slacks that belong to Zayn and the same white shirt from earlier except it’s now buttoned and accentuated with a thin blue tie that suits him much better than the black one he’d chosen before. His hair looks different with his fringe feathered across his forehead in a way that Harry has never seen before and his jawline is sharper than ever without even a hint of stubble. His striking appearance instantly gains the attention of the room filling it with over exaggerated cheers of approval and whistling that only makes Louis more apt to ignore them.

“Alright, alright. All of you fuck off.” The words lose any harshness they might have held with the apples of Louis’ cheeks so pink.

“What? Why?” Zayn frowns coming over to examine his handiwork more closely. “You look good. Own it. And also, a thank you would be nice. That hair and that outfit didn’t put themselves together,” he mutters.

“ _Gee, Zayn,_ _thanks_ ,” Louis rolls his eyes. “And I don’t have time to ‘ _own it’_ ,” he scoffs at them. “I have a presentation to give in less than _four_ hours to a room full of very important, rich people whom I need to charm into feeling highly charitable in order to fund my lake clean-up project, okay? This is _serious_. It’s everything. Today could make or break my career. The future of an entire ecosystem and others like it are at stake here. This is _literally_ life or death,” he says all in one big breath.

The room goes silent under the weight of his words but Zayn, Liam, and Niall still smirk at each other over his outburst.

“Yeah, okay…but what’s all that got to do with your arse looking like a dream in my trousers?” Zayn laughs making everyone else laugh too when Louis breezes past him with an extremely miffed ‘ _I hate you all_.’

They do this to each other a lot. This weird sort of teasing banter that initially Harry didn’t quite understand. When he had first witnessed it, he thought it was born out of anger and ill-intent but as time went on he realized the four of them do it out of love for one another. An annoying, at times even infuriating, brotherly form of love, but love nonetheless.

Harry has never been very good at emulating it. He doesn’t fare well in terms of teasing and sarcastic jokes, but his genuine thoughts are better than nothing so he offers them to his friends whenever possible.

“I think you look beautiful today, Louis.”

Harry finally speaks up, unintentionally silencing the room again, however it’s a different kind of quiet now. The kind that makes Harry question if he’s said something wrong, but he couldn’t have because Louis has never looked more handsome. In fact, there have been times Harry was certain no other being in existence could ever be more beautiful; a naïve thought to be sure since it was one of the first things Harry can remember thinking besides being cold and scared in the woods. That was before he knew beauty even had a name or that it is hugely objective. No two people view it the same way, but Harry can’t imagine someone seeing Louis right now and disagreeing.

“And, your speech is really great,” Harry continues. “I um, I heard you practicing it all week,” he admits though he regrets doing so immediately because he’s not supposed to listen in if he can help it. Louis doesn’t seem angry with him for the invasion of privacy though. A couple of shades pinker in the face as well as a bit surprised to learn that he had an audience other than his own reflection in the mirror, but not upset.

“Thanks, Haz,” he whispers on the end of a tiny grin. Harry doesn’t know how Louis’ happiness always seems directly tied to his own, but he grins too, glad to know that he at least made Louis smile today.

It only lasts for a moment before Niall quietly clears his throat and announces the time, sending everyone including Louis into a renewed frenzy.

“Shit. I have to go,” Louis hisses quickly patting at his pockets to make sure he has everything he needs as the other boys do the same with their own pockets. “Okay, I’m leaving,” he tells the room. “And, Ni, please remember to-”

“Get Lotts from the train station at twelve-thirty,” he finishes for him. “I know. I remember because you’ve told me a billion times since you woke up.”

“Tell her I’m sorry.”

“She knows. Now, stop worrying and go give your presentation that we’ve _all_ heard you practicing and save the algae or the germs or whatever it is you’re saving,” Niall smiles. “You’re going to be great.”

“Yeah, Lou. Good luck. Come here.” Liam hugs him which prompts Zayn to do the same thing, his words of encouragement spoken more closely to Louis’ ear meant only for him. Harry tries to focus on other sounds like the birds outside or Niall chewing next to him but he still manages to catch the end of Zayn’s whispered, ‘ _You’ve got this_. _We_ _love you_.’

Louis is the first to leave followed by Liam a few minutes later and then Zayn who promises to keep an eye on Louis at work and let everyone know what happens as soon as his presentation is over.

Harry can’t wait to hear the good news.

In the end, it’s just him and Niall left like on most Friday’s. Niall finishes eating and then goes back to bed to finish sleeping off his shift that ended just a few hours ago. Harry didn’t have to work last night, so he isn’t tired. Actually, he’s wide awake now that he’s eaten so he busies himself by doing helpful things like tackling the long list of things Louis wanted to get done before his sister arrives for the weekend but couldn’t since his job got in the way.

The house is pretty much always in a perpetual state of disorganization until Harry or Liam has a day off. Zayn leaves lighters and coffee mugs on nearly every surface, Niall treats the floor and staircase like his own personal closet, Liam’s work things hardly ever make it past the front door due to his exhaustion after coming off a twelve-hour hospital shift, and Louis’ room on most days is just plain scary. Tidying up is a task Harry has taken on since the beginning. He can do it in a fraction of the time that it takes the other boys, so he doesn’t mind at all. He likes being helpful actually. Even more so today since it means so much to Louis.

Niall is awake by the time Harry’s finished getting the house ready for their guest. Niall finds him in the kitchen, his nose leading him straight to the chocolate-chip cookies and double chocolate brownies cooling on the countertop.

“God, how did I ever live without you?” he asks before taking a corner piece of brownie and devouring it without missing a single crumb. He grabs a cookie next, his eyes scanning the spotless kitchen and focusing in on the wall near the back door that is now noticeably bare. “Wasn’t there a giant bookshelf there like an hour ago?”

“Yes,” Harry answers with a nod. “I moved it back to Liam’s room.”

“ _Upstairs_? All by yourself?” Niall coughs out. He shakes his head though still massively amazed that Harry can lift relatively heavy things without much trouble. He wore the same expression at work a few weeks ago when Harry moved the pub’s refrigerator so Lisa could find the source of a leak and then singlehandedly unloaded sixty crates of liquor from their distributer in five minutes the next day, though Harry made sure to grumble and at least pretend it was a hardship.

“I have to pick up Lottie in a few minutes,” he comments before picking up another one. “Want to come with?”

Harry has only ever seen pictures of Louis’ younger sister but he can’t pretend that he isn’t curious to meet her.

“Um, sure, Ni, but do you think she’ll mind?” Louis has been nothing but kind from the start. He assumes his sister would be just as wonderful, but there’s no guarantee.

“ _Lottie?”_ Niall laughs. “Not with the way we’ve all been gossiping about you and Lou for months now.” Niall glances at the way Harry’s brow furrows and quickly backtracks. “All _good_ things of course,” he smiles. “Trust me. She’s looking forward to finally meeting you, Haz. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Harry has never been to the train station before so he’s more than fascinated by everything going on from the hundreds of people bustling about to all the machinery safely and efficiently getting them all from one place to another. One person in particular however stands out amongst all the others with the most shimmery hair Harry has ever seen. It’s like silver where it cascades down her shoulders but her eyes are just like Louis’, vibrant and filled with so much light when she spots a familiar face in the crowd.

“Niall! I didn’t know you were picking me up!” she exclaims dropping her bags completely to hug him hello. “I was expecting Lou!”

“I know. And he really wanted to be here, but he ended up having to work,” Niall apologizes on Louis’ behalf.

“No, it’s more than okay,” she waves him off. “I’ll get to see him when he gets home, and plus, I get to spend _all_ weekend annoying him and making up for lost time.”

“I’m sure he’s looking forward to it,” Niall laughs. Lottie glances to his right and notices the relative stranger raptly watching their interactions, but she smiles like she’s known Harry all her life.

“Oh my God,” she whispers to which Niall nods with the same amount of glee in his eyes.

“I know. We told you,” he smirks. “Lou can’t even make sentences sometimes. It’s amazing.”

Harry feels oddly nervous when Louis’ sister leaves her place with Niall to come stand in front of him. “Hi, there. I’m Lottie. It’s very nice to meet you.”

She extends a hand in his direction so Harry hurries to meet her half-way feeling instant relief from how gentle her touch is. The resemblance between her and Louis isn’t as obvious as the resemblance between Niall and his older brother, but there are still familiar parts of Louis that make up her features and coincidentally make Harry smile.

“Hello. I’m Harry and it’s very nice to meet you too,” he says, something about his smile and the deep quality of his voice making Lottie and Niall exchange delighted looks once again.

“And, when exactly will my lovely, single, big brother be getting home again?” she asks

“Don’t know for sure. He said he’d try to leave work as early as possible,” Niall shrugs while taking Lottie’s bags for her.

“That is perfect,” she says, turning her smile on Harry again. “God, I can’t wait to finally see this- _him_ ,” she quickly corrects herself, pasting on an innocent grin. “I can’t wait to see _him_.”

They all get the text from Zayn they’ve been waiting on about an hour later confirming what they already knew. Apparently, Louis was brilliant and his presentation went so well that the vote to fund his project was unanimous.

Zayn gets home from work soon afterwards but Louis isn’t with him. He’s still busy at work going over the details of his plan with his new funding team.

“We _have_ to celebrate tonight,” Zayn tells them flopping down next to Niall and Lottie on the couch. “I talked to Li already and he agrees. This is big for him. You know how he loves that lake.”

“Yeah, and we’ve got Lotts here this weekend so that already makes it a party,” Niall says with a playful ruffle of her long hair that makes Lottie slap at him the same way Louis does whenever Niall does it to him. Harry watches her silver hair move like water as she fixes it back into place. He’s been fascinated with it ever since the train station; wishing he could touch it too just to see if it feels as silky as it looks. “Well, obviously I’m down for a good night out. We just have to convince Louis to come with us,” Niall says, not sounding very hopeful of that happening.

Lately, Louis will only come to the pub if Harry asks him to and then he only stays for a little while. Harry has noticed that he takes off even faster depending on who’s working. More specifically if Sean is working, but Harry can’t figure out why that is when Sean is so nice and helpful to everyone.

“Oh, he’ll agree,” Zayn assures them. “It’s either that or we're dragging his arse there. Harry? Are you good with going out? You’re not working tonight are you?”

“Erm- No. I’m not on the schedule,” he answers from the floor, completely missing the next thing his friend says as he watches Lottie slide down to the floor too and pull colorful little vials out of her bag to line up along the edge of the coffee table.

She scrapes a thin board across the edges of her fingernails to even them out. Several other peculiar little tools are produced from her bag and used before she picks the brightest of the little vials to color them in. It smells awful, but the liquid is blue like her eyes and glittery in the light, and once again, Harry is obsessed.

Very few women come through their front door and the ones who rarely do usually don’t stay longer than a night after coming home with one of his housemates from the pub. None of them bring whole suitcases full of their belongings or ever has the time to sit down and do cool things like _this_.

“Can I try it?” he asks making everyone stop their conversation to blink at him in confusion.

“Try what?” Niall frowns.

“ _That_ ,” Harry gestures across the table towards the colorful row of polishes. “I think I’d like some.” He glances down at his own naked nails imagining how they’d look all shimmery like Lottie’s.

“ _Yes!_ ” she agrees right away, getting up to come sit next to him and assess his hands. “Oh my God, Louis _never_ lets me do anything fun like this unless I tackle him first! Which color would you like? I have dozens!”

“Mate,” Zayn snorts as Harry carefully examines each bottle. “You don’t want that stuff. It’s for girls.”

“Um, says who?” Lottie demands. “Anyone can paint their nails,” she says matter-of-factly.

“Yeah, they can,” Niall agrees. “But _men_ usually don’t.”

To which Lottie replies, ‘ _Maybe you’ve both been hanging out with the wrong men_.’

She wasn’t exaggerating about how many paint options she brought along with her. There was already an entire rainbow sitting on the coffee table which only grows by the time she’s finished fishing more bottles out of her suitcase. After much deliberation, Harry chooses a light purple called _lilac kiss,_ recognizing the color from the soft hoodie hanging up in Louis’ room and how much Louis smiles whenever wearing it.

“Do you think Louis will like them?” he asks once Lottie finishes working her magic with one hand and moves onto the other. Once again, the room falls silent as everyone exchanges knowing smirks with one another that after all this time living here Harry still can’t quite figure out.

“Well, there’s no way to know for sure until he gets here,” Lottie answers after redirecting her attention back to his nails. “Why?” she grins up at him. “Do you _want_ my brother to like them?”

“Very much so,” he grins back, though he can’t explain why he feels that way. He just knows he’d love for Louis to look at him and smile the way he does whenever it rains or whenever Harry rests his head on Louis’ shoulder as they watch movies.

When Lottie is all done painting his nails like tiny purple petals Harry thanks her half a dozen times.

“Of course, Harry,” she laughs hugging him in the same warm way as her brother. “Now that I know you’re into it, my makeup bag is always open to you.”

“Don’t tell him that or he’ll be after your lashes and lipstick next,” Zayn teases.

Her eye makeup _is_ quite beautiful and her lips are incredibly lush and pink. Harry has been wondering how she achieved such a feat.

“Do you want to try some of that too?” she asks excitedly, already untwisting a black tube and carefully brushing its contents onto his lashes. “Ooh! We should go shopping,” she suggests after sitting back to admire her work. Harry is overly pleased to hear Niall and Zayn admit that it looks good. “And your _hair_ ,” she gushes. “It’s amazing. Maybe we could do something special with it for tonight?”

Lottie runs her fingers through his long curls as she bunches it up at the back of his head to make it appear shorter. Her smile only widens the longer she looks at him.

“Harry, love? Do you trust me?” she asks with a bat of her eyelashes. Everything about Louis’ sister is fascinating from the jewelry decorating her fingers to the rich quality of her skin. All the boys who live in the house dress very similarly including Harry since most of his clothes were borrowed until he got a job and started buying some for himself. Lottie’s appearance however is outstanding. Harry would be honored for her to make him look even half as amazing.  

“I trust you very much,” he decides, now feeling excited too like the emotion is contagious.

“Better hurry with that makeover, Lotts. _You-know-who_ will be home soon,” Zayn sings under his breath, but Harry still hears it. He should know better by now.

“You mean Liam?” Harry says looking away from his gorgeous nails for a quick glance at the clock. He’s usually home early on Fridays that he doesn’t have to stay late.

“ _Liam_?” Niall grimaces. “No. Obviously he meant Lo-”

“ _Liam_ ,” Zayn says, slapping a hand over his friend’s mouth before can even finish his sentence. “I meant Liam. Stop talking,” he orders.

Harry doesn’t bother trying to interpret what the big deal is or the weird, silent conversation they’re now having with their eyebrows because Harry misses Liam, sure. He and Liam are great friends, but Louis is the person Harry is most anxious to see tonight.

Hopefully he’ll get home fast.


	6. Chapter 6

Louis’ trip from the car to the front door is much lighter than on typical Fridays. Usually he’s carrying his work bag and his arms are full of takeaway from somewhere on the way home. Tonight, he isn’t hauling anything greasy into their house thanks to a text from Zayn saying they’ve got dinner covered for tonight in celebration of Louis’ project being so well-received that its first steps are being initiated as early as next week.

All he has wanted since is presentation to get home so he could tell everyone how excited he is. His sister arrived today. He knows without a doubt that she’ll be just as proud of him as everyone else, but honestly, it’s Harry he’s the most eager to see. Harry told him how brilliant he thought his idea was to help restore the lake over a month ago when Louis first mentioned it. The thought hadn’t even fully taken shape and Harry had supported him. He even admitted to listening in to him perfecting his speech up in his room. If anybody ever made Louis feel like he could do this, it was him.

“I’m back!” Louis shouts, stepping out of his shoes at the door like everybody else who’s already home as evidence would suggest. Niall, Zayn, and Harry’s shoes are all here along with a familiar pair of metallic leather Converses that could only belong to Lottie.

“Oi! Where is everybody?”

Louis starts walking further into the house, loosening his borrow tie as he goes. Someone yells the word kitchen. It sounds like Niall which isn’t at all surprising. Neither is the giant chorus of congratulations everyone shouts at him. What is however is the way Louis stops dead in his tracks upon entering the room because the extremely fit person beaming at him from the kitchen table looks nothing like he did when Louis left this morning.

The room is staring. All of his housemates and even his sister are watching as Louis tries to remember how to breathe. It feels like a bit of an attack coming home to Harry dressed in the outfit he’s wearing and looking so incredible with his new short hair that somehow makes him look even more beautiful than before. Louis was only gone for a day. Less than, really. It was a measly eight hours and in that time Harry went from the dimply, bright-eyed man he brought home to this person who is absolutely glowing as his lips turn up into a grin.

“Hi, Louis,” he says in that usually easy way that always leaves Louis feeling unbelievably sun-kissed despite being inside. Harry has made Louis feel that way from the beginning. All warm and sunny inside, but it’s never felt like this, like Harry’s gaze is a burst of light slowly simmering through his veins.

Louis isn’t mentally ready to receive the tight embrace Harry wraps him in after he leaves his place at the table to come congratulate him. Hugs from Harry are usually full of long dark curls falling all over his shoulders and tickling Louis’ cheek. Now his thick hair is swept back with only a couple of unruly strands falling into his eyes, the sharp line his jaw moving against Louis’ neck as he claims he knew Louis would be great all along.

“Thank you, Haz,” he says back, repeating it louder when the words accidentally come out as a whisper. Everybody else quickly moves in to bombard him with hugs and congratulations once Harry lets go. Louis’ still so dumbfounded by the last sixty seconds that it takes him a moment to regain his focus and thank them all.

“I’m so proud of you and I’ve missed you so much!” Lottie says squeezing him the tightest of all. He hasn’t seen his sister in months so Louis ends up squeezing her too.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t pick you up today,” he apologizes.

He had taken off work and had been so looking forward to them spending the afternoon together. Lottie doesn’t look as though she minds him having to bail on their plans. She’s currently smirking at him in the way she always does when she has done something less than innocent which she insists is for his own good.

“Oh, don’t worry about that. I was alright with the boys until you got here. And we took Harry on a little _shopping trip_ ,” she informs him with a significant raise of her eyebrows.

“I can see that,” he mutters. Harry looks like he just stepped off a bloody runway. His jeans have never been tighter and Louis can see straight through his flowery blouse. Louis watches him push his hair back into place and feels his heart skip a beat or two when he catches a flash of light purple painted onto his nails.

“Well? What do you think?” she asks, barely even concealing how thrilling this is for her because he’s sure it’s more than obvious he’s having a hard time thinking straight at all.

“Um- Er- I think it must’ve been a very productive trip,” Louis says, careful not to let any of the things he’s really thinking fly out of his mouth. He quickly averts his gaze to the unopened beer sitting on the table when Harry catches him staring back and forth between his hair and his exposed chest. God, he needs to get a grip.

Zayn seems to notice him struggling to remain cool and hands Louis the beer he suddenly finds so interesting, though, the smirk on his lips is just as devilish as Lottie’s. _Figures._

“It was highly successful,” Zayn affirms in response to his neutral answer, giving Louis’ professional hair a hard ruffle so that looks more like it does every other day. “Glad you think so, because we’re all going out tonight right after your celebration dinner on us!”

Now that Louis’ looking at people other than Harry he notices that everyone here is dressed for a night out. Taking care of dinner for him is one thing, but no one said anything about making a fuss. Actually, Louis had pretty grand plans of staying in and watching movies, a pipe dream which has now been upgraded to include downing at least two bottles of wine in his room and pouting about his extremely inconvenient attraction to his gorgeous housemate that he has to forcibly blink away from because it’s like looking into the fucking sun.

“Um- Thanks guys. But, you don’t really have to-”

“Of course we do, Tommo,” Niall interrupts. “Haz and I already called down to the pub to let everyone know this is your night! We even got a banner!” A quick glance over at Harry’s conspiratorial smile confirms Niall’s claim. _Figures._

“Wait. What? Why would you get a banner?”

“Um, why _not_? It’s what you do when it’s a fucking celebration,” Niall answers flatly like that should be obvious. Louis guesses he’s right, thinking back to the weekend Liam found out he passed his final nursing exam. They were all so deliriously drunk that details such as banners are a complete blur.

“…I guess I’ll need to change then,” Louis sighs looking down at himself in mostly borrowed clothes from this morning. If he’s being forced to socialize with people besides his friends and family then he at least wants to be comfortable.

He doesn’t even have to look up at the soft ‘ _I think you look great already_ ,’ to know who said it. When Louis does, he feels his cheeks instantly warm because Harry is the one who looks beautiful tonight. Every night really; every single day.

Louis can’t even say it. He doesn’t trust himself to say something like that in front of everyone without taking it overboard or making things painfully weird so he keeps it simple with an uncomfortable quick, “Er- Thanks, H. Y-You too,” that leaves very little room for Louis to fuck up. He can’t be sure and he can’t figure out why, but something about what he just said dims the bright light in Harry’s eyes, and oddly enough everyone else in the room glares at Louis like he just kicked a puppy.

The room feels like it’s closing in so Louis quickly dismisses himself to go change, rushing out to avoid the weird tension he just created. Upstairs in the safety of his bedroom is the only place in the house where no one can witness him mentally berating himself for falling for someone he shouldn’t have.

*

Large cold pints of beer have been Louis’ choice of drink all night long. Even during dinner a couple of hours ago at the sushi bar he loves, but somehow didn’t excite him like his friends thought it would. He put on a smile and joined in the toast celebrating his big day at work, but he didn’t feel it in his heart. How could he when the person who usually sits next to him was all the way at the opposite end of the table sadly avoiding his eyes.

He leaves his lone booth at the pub and goes to order another one from Lisa up at the bar. There’s a bit of a wait with just her making drinks so Louis takes a seat under the giant banner hanging from the ceiling in his honor that reads _Louis Saved the Lake!_ in painted letters. Lisa hands him his fifth pint of the night and Louis heads back to his booth, taking a quick peek over at the one Harry is currently sitting in on the other side of the room.

Sean’s there with him which really isn’t a surprise. The fact that he’s into Harry can be seen from space. Harry doesn’t see it. Not yet anyway. He always speaks very fondly of Sean like all his other friends but Louis has been waiting for the evitable day that changes to something more.

Harry catches sight of him staring and the corners of his lips turn up into an encouraging grin. Louis tries to do the same wondering if it looks as genuine as he’s attempting to make it. Probably not he realizes when his feet refuse to walk over to join them so Harry blinks away to continue entertaining Sean on his break. It serves Louis right because he shouldn’t have even looked. Whatever’s going on over there between them is none of his business anyway.

Louis takes a long swallow of his drink, accidentally snorting some into his nose when something smacks him in the back of the head. Or rather some _one_.

“What the fuck is your problem?” Louis demands as Zayn slides into his booth with an accusatory, unapologetic expression for the second time tonight.

“Funny. I was going to ask you the same thing,” he retorts.

“Why are you here again?” Louis rolls his eyes away from his best friend almost forgetting that Harry and Sean are sitting in that direction so he can’t look there either.

“What’s wrong?” Zayn asks when Louis quickly turns back to face him. “See someone interesting over there?”

“ _No_ ,” he quips back. “But I do see someone annoying as fuck right in front of me.”

Zayn narrows his eyes at Louis giving him the same sour look he’s been receiving from everybody all night. Even from his own sister. Even from Liam who just arrived from work, but apparently word travels fast within their circle.

“You’re an idiot, you know that, right? A _brilliant_ idiot,” he says with a nod at his banner. “But an idiot nonetheless.”

“Wow, Z. Thanks. You’re the best,” Louis murmurs to himself since Zayn is already gone by the time he’s finished saying it.

Louis takes another sip of his beer, spluttering when he feels another hard blow, this time to his shoulder. “ _Zayn, what the fuck_?” he shouts only to realize he’s yelling at the wrong person.

It’s Niall, the nicest, most easy-going person in the world glaring at him like he’s committed a crime.

“ _Now_ what have I done?” he asks since he has somehow offended every person here enough to incite petty violence.

Louis has kept to himself all night. He hasn’t bothered anyone and yet people keep coming over to bother _him_. He sits there waiting for Niall to say something. To give some hint as to why Louis has become the official punching bag of the night. Louis only receives more of the same treatment when he moves to pick up his beer and Niall grabs it before he can, holding it hostage on his side of the table.

“You know, I may be terribly confused here, but I was under the impression that this was _my_ night,” Louis mutters.

Niall doesn’t look like he feels sorry for him in the slightest. He doesn’t even glance up at the banner he worked so hard to get hung up in Louis’ honor.

“Why couldn’t you just tell him he looks nice, huh?” he demands. “That’s all he wanted.”

“I _did_ tell him.” Well, sort of Louis thinks just as the toe of a shoe collides with his shin. “ _Ow!_ Okay, I lied whatever. Jesus, will you stop doing that?”

“Don’t know. It depends. Will you stop being a _dick_ to my friend?”

“I haven’t even done anything!” Louis maintains for the hundredth time tonight.

“Yeah, and that’s the fucking point,” Niall fires back. “He’s all dressed up for _you_. He wanted to look nice for your night for _you_ , and you couldn’t even acknowledge it.”

“Everyone else in that kitchen was dressed up and no one is angry I didn’t compliment _them_.”

“That’s because none of us gives a shit what you think, but _he_ does. It’s different with you two and you know it. You’re sitting over here miserable and Harry’s sitting over there miserable too wondering what he did that was so horrible you won’t even look at him.”

Louis glances over at him on the other side of the room, nursing the same beer he’s had all night and half-heartedly laughing at something Lottie is showing him on her phone with Sean laughing right next to him. Even from this far away he looks stunning. Louis can admit he seems a little down tonight, but still just as gorgeous and lovely as ever.

“He looks okay to me,” Louis decides. He’s talking and hanging out with people. That’s more Harry than anything.

“He wants that to be you over there. You’re the one he likes, Lou. I don’t get it. Why are you punishing him by pretending you don’t know that or like you don’t feel the same way?” Niall asks, watching Louis’ gaze guiltily drops to his hands. “…Unless of course, you don’t.”

Louis does. That’s the whole problem.

“I’m not _punishing_ him,” he says after a while, because he isn’t. Or at least he didn’t mean to. “Niall,” he sighs. “He hasn’t gotten to choose one thing about his own life. If he does like me it’s because of the way we met or because I’m just... there,” he shrugs. “He wants love and there are so many other people out there who are much better at doing that than me.”

Harry just so happens to be sitting next to one of them right now and then there’s the fact that Harry’s tip jar always has just as many phone numbers stuffed inside it as money. People are drawn to him and they want to get to know him better. Louis isn’t immune to this phenomenon, but it’s not fair for him to keep Harry all to himself like some twisted version of finder’s keepers. No matter how much he may want to.

“When’s the last time you heard of Harry being anything besides friends with Sean or anybody else?” Louis draws a blank so he says nothing, knowing that was the very answer Niall was looking for when he stands up from their booth. “Exactly,” Niall says, finally sliding Louis’ beer back in front of him like he’s earned some sort of prize. “Harry doesn’t need you to make his decisions for him, mate. He’s already made his choice and it’s you.”

*

Louis keeps his distance for the rest of the night, too nervous to approach Harry in front of everyone and too scared that everything Niall suggested about them was too good to be true, but what’s worse is not knowing for sure. Maybe everybody else is right and Louis isn’t as selfish as he thought for secretly wanting more. Maybe Harry always looks at him and smiles at him the way he does, because he feels it too.

There are too many of them after they call it a night to pile into one car. They barely fit when it’s just the five of them and everyone has been drinking tonight so they get two Ubers instead. The six of them wordlessly divide themselves but Liam seems just as torn about committing to one group as Louis is. Harry climbs into the backseat of one of the cars after Zayn does, his eyes wide with surprise when Louis slides in on his other side instead of Liam who had been just seconds from beating Louis there.

“Um, hi,” he says, blinking at Louis like him voluntarily getting this close tonight is some kind of delightful accident on Louis’ part after how distant he’s been.

Louis says hello back, feeling oddly nervous again even with no one really paying them any attention at the moment. “Do you mind being in the middle? B-Because we can switch,” he offers. “Whatever’s more comfortable for you. You’re the tallest.”

“No, it’s okay. I’m next to you, so…” he grins. “I don’t mind.”

With their bodies pressed together and Harry’s scent filling his nose Louis swears his stomach flutters the entire way home.

Everyone slumps up the drive towards the house where the promise of late-night food and comfy couches lie. Liam is already being sweet-talked into cooking something for them by Lottie, Niall, and Zayn when Louis reaches out for Harry’s wrist to stop him from following.

“Er- Hi, Haz. Um- _again_ ,” Louis says after randomly marooning them on the front steps away from everyone else.

Harry’s dimples appear instantly along with a small smile. It’s the first genuine one Louis has seen on his face all night.

“Hello,” he chuckles paying no mind to the commotion that can be heard from the house as he gives Louis every bit of his attention.

He doesn’t really have a plan Louis realizes when all he can focus on are the rich color of Harry’s lips rather than the adult conversation that needs to take place which should’ve happened ages ago. Louis moves to shut the front door catching sight of Zayn and his sister grinning just before it closes. He can’t tell if it’s because they’ve been caught spying or because they know something big is happening.

Louis can’t do this here. Not with the knowledge that everyone inside is just waiting for them to come back in.

“Can we walk for a bit?” he asks. “I think we should talk.”

Luckily, Harry doesn’t hate the idea. He doesn’t even consider declining before his face breaks out into another surprised grin. “I’d love to.”

He has no idea of where they’re going when they start up the street in the same route he’s seen Liam and Harry take whenever they run together. It’s so quiet at this time of night that Louis can hear every breath he takes, each exhale coming more shaky than the last when Harry’s arm grazes his.

Harry waits patiently for Louis to say something as their house gets smaller and smaller in the moonlight. They can’t walk forever Louis realizes as they come to the end of their street. With a deep breath Louis reaches out for Harry’s wrist again slowly letting their fingers intertwine and get used to the feeling of holding one another.

“Harry? Do you remember the night we met?”

It’s a topic they’ve never discussed. Not at length anyway. After learning where Harry came from and how he was abandoned they pretty much never mentioned it again to keep from upsetting him.

“…Some of it,” he answers eventually, clearly not expecting this to be the topic of choice. “Not a lot. Just bits and pieces.”

That particular time in Harry’s life is marked by a lot of awful things, but Louis met one of the best people in the whole world that night and Harry got a family; an entire houseful of people who love him, so in a way, all that good outweighs the bad.

“I remember being confused. There were voices at first and then there weren’t. I remember the woods and the feeling of the sun on my face but that’s mostly it,” he shrugs but then a happy little grin tugs at his lips. “Nothing else except the moon coming back, and then, I saw you.”

Louis remembers that moment with sharp clarity. Mostly because he thought he was about to be murdered by some weirdo nudist serial killer. It didn’t take long for Harry’s wide green eyes to ease his worries. He didn’t have to say a word for Louis to just know Harry needed him. He can’t even believe he ever considered leaving Harry behind for even a second. All of their lives would be so different without him in it. Louis wouldn’t currently be falling in love, that’s for sure. Or _more_ in love since Louis knows in his heart that he’s already there. He has been for a while.

“So, were you as afraid of me as I was of you,” Louis teases. Harry laughs like the thought is preposterous.

“No,” he grins. “I just wanted to go wherever you were going. Even then.”

Louis stops them in the middle of the street and holds Harry’s other hand in his, biting down on a grin when he catches a flash of Harry’s nails again that look just like the hoodie Louis spent all of last weekend wearing. God, he looks so beautiful.

“Harry, I wasn’t mad at you earlier. I-I should’ve told you that.” Louis should’ve told him a lot of things. Mainly the way he can’t hear himself think sometimes from how hard his heart beats when they’re together.

“I didn’t think you were mad,” he says to assuage his guilt. “I just think we both feel things that are different from what other people feel around us. It can be confusing.”

And scary as hell. Louis has never felt this way in his entire life.

“Well, what sorts of things do you feel?”

It’s a question that has Harry beaming from ear to ear before he even answers. “Happy,” he says before quickly changing his mind. “But not _just_ happy though. It’s like- I don’t know…” he smiles. “Sometimes it’s like you’re the sun and you fuel me somehow. Sometimes you smile or look at me and you create this huge burst of energy that I can feel pumping through my veins,” he explains. “Which I know makes no sense whatsoever because energy can be neither created or destroyed, but it’s true and it all started when I met you, so, maybe in this one case the laws of chemistry are wrong?” he finishes with a pensive frown. “That was kind of confusing wasn’t it?”

“Um. Surprisingly _, no_ ,” Louis says in a breathless laugh.

Nothing Harry has ever said has ever been so straightforward and clear. It’s science. Basic chemistry, and in this case the laws _are_ wrong because something was created when the universe brought them together. It just took a while to realize what that was.

“I get it, Haz. And same,” Louis is finally able to admit with a sure squeeze of Harry’s hand. “I-I feel the same about you.” He probably wouldn’t have described it quite the same way, but the gist is very similar.

“Wait. Really?” Harry seems highly skeptical of that being a possibility but also immensely hopeful of it being true.

“Yeah, Haz. Of course I do.”

Louis can’t help but feel shitty for not telling him until now. Clearly, he had no idea so Louis makes sure he knows everything right here and now.

“I love that you give scientific explanations out of nowhere and that you read so much,” Louis tells him. “I also love that you do it faster than I can blink,” he chuckles. Harry is so brilliant he reads about things regular people can hardly wrap their heads around for fun and then turns around and uses the first law of thermodynamics to describe how he’s been falling in love all this time too.

“Well, I’m not _that_ fast,” Harry rolls his eyes, the vibrant color of them glinting even with just the light of the moon. That’s a lie because he _is_ and it’s amazing, but there are so many other things Louis loves about him as well.

He reaches up to push his newly-short hair back into place where Lottie fixed it and watches Harry lean into his touch. “You look incredible, Haz. I couldn’t believe how beautiful you were when I got home.” Louis can hardly believe it now or that this moment is about to change everything.

Harry basks in the compliment, his happy grin going slack when Louis rests one hand at the back of his neck and the other nervously slides up his bicep.

“I’m going to kiss you,” he explains when Harry goes still, unsure of what he’s supposed to do with Louis this close.

“O-Okay,” he nods, now leaning in with the gentle pressure Louis’ using to guide him down a couple of inches.

He’s not sure if Harry has kissed someone before. Louis has never had the courage to ask about him and Sean, but he assumes this is another big first for Harry when their lips meet and he gasps at the feeling. It takes a few seconds of coaxing on Louis’ part before Harry’s confidence builds enough to kiss him back. After that, their lips move and slide together in perfect sync as if they’ve done this a hundred times.

Their lips slow to an eventual stop and Louis pulls back. He finds Harry in a state of wonder after he finally blinks his eyes open. Harry runs the pad his thumb over Louis’ lips and then his own, grinning to himself like he finally understands their purpose.

“That was a kiss,” he says aloud, obviously still a bit shocked he just got to experience one.

“It was,” Louis confirms also in a bit of shock that he just did that.

“That was… It was…” Harry’s sentence tapers off into a wide grin as he glances around them for the first time and smiles.

“What?” Louis chuckles.

“Nothing,” he shrugs. “It’s just- We’re in the middle of the street.” And so they are. Louis hadn’t even noticed. Thankfully their neighborhood is dead at the moment. “It’s kind of like the couple from the Notebook. They kissed in the street.” That’s only Harry’s favorite film of all time besides the dozens of rom-coms he’s come to love. Leave it to him to take Louis’ poorly-constructed plan of kissing him out of nowhere and turn it into magic. “Maybe if we’re lucky we’ll end up like them one day. I mean in love like them. Not dead,” he snorts when Louis makes a horrified face.

“Yeah,” Louis smiles against his lips. “Maybe someday we will.” He sure hopes so anyway. Loving Harry for a lifetime wouldn’t be too hard of a job. It’d be an honor.

\---

The house is quiet once they make their way back to it. Louis assumes everyone has wandered off to bed by now. Exhaustion is certainly pulling on him after his big day at work and a night that turned out to be better and more exciting than he could’ve ever imagined. He flops down on the couch; his official bed for the weekend and hopes his sister appreciates him sacrificing his spine for her comfort. He certainly appreciates her for all she’s done.

The feeling of Harry’s lips on his is still such a strange sensation when he tentatively leans down to kiss him goodnight, but it’s one he’s quickly getting used to. It’s better than any goodnight hug they’ve shared that’s for sure.

“See you in the morning,” he whispers just like any other night they go their separate ways when they’re upstairs.

“It’s already morning,” Louis kindly reminds him. He sneaks in another quick kiss before Harry leaves.

“I’ll see you _later_ in the morning then.” Harry rolls his eyes but with the way his face is all lit up Louis knows he didn’t mind. “Goodnight, Lou.”

“Goodnight.”

Louis watches him make his way up the stairs and secretly wishes he could follow or that Harry could stay just to keep tonight from ending. It hardly seems real when Harry grins over his shoulder and Louis doesn’t have to berate himself for allowing his heart to skip a beat. It then occurs to him that he never has to do that again. The butterflies can flood his stomach and Harry’s presence can thermodynamically fuel him like the sun or whatever it is he said because all the good feelings that have been unleashed tonight don’t have to end. They’re just getting started.


	7. Chapter 7

One Month Later

“Haz, come on,” Louis repeats through the bathroom door. “Babe, I need to get in there. I’m going to be late.” He waits a few more seconds with his ear pressed close to the wood. He can’t really hear much but there is movement going on and that’s more than Louis could say before.

“Haz? Are you awake?” The lock clicks and the door swings open to a tall, groggy, and completely naked man rubbing at his eyes until they adjust well enough for him to see Louis standing there.

“Hey, Lou. I’m sorry,” he says with a sleepy grin that immediately earns Louis’ forgiveness.

“No, it’s alright.” He’s definitely going to be late now, but when he’s staring at a pair of dimples it’s hard to care. “It’s just- My team is probably at the lake already and it’s our first day out in the field so I’m excited but I’m also really nervous about being other peoples’ boss because, you know, I’ve never actually _been_ a boss before. It’s always been just me and- and- _Mmm._ ”

Louis doesn’t get to finish talking at Harry about how simultaneously terrified and anxious he is for a day he’s been looking forward to for the last month. All his brain registers is the deep kiss Harry pulls him into, the slow drag of his tongue massaging away every new fear before Louis can even think it.

“Good morning.”

Louis feels the words spoken against his mouth rather than hears them as the low vibration of them tickles his lips. “Morning,” he answers back after a much needed deep breath.

“You’re going to be brilliant. You know that, right?” Louis isn’t exactly convinced of this but everyone else seems to be. Zayn, Liam, and Niall all told him to calm down and breathe but that’s so much easier to do when the suggestion is coming from Harry.

“I hope so,” he sighs.

“You will.” Harry rests their foreheads together and lets his eyes close in the middle of their time-out from the rest of the world. Louis grins to himself, wondering how his boyfriend’s electric blue nails look slipping through the locks of his hair. “Feeling better?” he whispers once the usual ruckus of their household at morning starts filtering up the stairs and into their little bubble.

Louis nods, doing a quick inventory of his emotions and finding most of the ones that had him panicking a minute ago are now gone. It’s amazing how good Harry is at making that happen. He’s feeling much better.

“Good. That means today is officially worry-free,” Harry grins. Louis _was_ just feeling better. Until Harry stepped back giving Louis a bird’s eye view of every bare inch of his skin from the waist down. Now he’s pretty sure his pulse is spiking. “Well, the bathroom’s open now so you go get ready and I’ll see you downstairs in a bit?”

Louis has no idea what the hell he just said after he blinks back up to his face.

“Babe? Did you hear me?”

Harry fondly shakes his head when he doesn’t receive even the hint of a response. He reaches behind him into the bathroom for a thick towel and positions it around his hips. All the while Louis hardly blinks, mesmerized by all the flashes of exposed skin that Harry is currently doing a shitty job of covering.

“Er- Yeah. Sure did,” he stammers as Harry quickly kisses his temple and then happily skips downstairs without a care in the world. “See you.”

It takes Louis a few seconds of staring after his incredibly fit, half-naked boyfriend to realize he’s now running even more behind, and also, that was _his_ towel that Harry just accidentally swiped and somehow he’s okay with it. Good for his towel.

After the quickest shower known to man and deciding that one more day of long stubble isn’t going to hurt anybody, Louis makes it downstairs with exactly five minutes to spare to shove a forkful of something greasy down his throat and find his keys.

Louis glances around the kitchen once he determines his keys must be in there somewhere since they’re not anywhere else he’s checked. Zayn, Liam, and Niall all stop and smirk in his direction and then there’s Harry, grinning as he pushes out the chair of the place next to him that miraculously already has a hot plate of food waiting for him along with his keys he would’ve spent forever looking for. Honestly, what would he do without him.

Everyone watches him cross the room to take the seat that Harry held for him. They’re amused, expectant expressions change to expressions of confusion when Louis shoves his keys into his pocket, sits down, and starts eating.

“…You aren’t ranting and raving,” Zayn furrows his eyebrows. “ _Why_ aren’t you ranting and raving?”

“Maybe because I never do that.”

“Uh, yeah, you do,” Liam disagrees. “You tore through here like a tornado fifteen minutes ago.”

“Yeah, you were whining all over the place,” Niall adds. “ _And_ you yelled at me for moving your keys off the coffee table. Which, by the way, I maintain I did _not_ do.”

Alright, so maybe Louis was a little high-strung earlier, but that was before Harry found him spinning out of control and effectively put an end to it.

“Mmm, yeah, I have no idea what you’re talking about, mate,” Louis shrugs. “Today is officially worry-free.”

Louis playfully knocks his knee against Harry’s who grins at him over his mug of coffee. Their little moment doesn’t go unnoticed.

Zayn is the first to comment, raising a surprised yet approving eyebrow. “Well, at least somebody else here knows how to reign you in now,” he mutters while grinning to himself. “Well done, H. It’s a tough job.”

As Louis’ best friend, telling him when to chill the fuck out has been Zayn’s duty since Louis’ existential crisis about whether to have having a robot or super hero themed cake for his eighth birthday. His and Harry’s approaches at handling his crisis’ are quite different of course. Zayn has never shoved his tongue down his throat for starters. Thankfully he just sticks to sarcasm and annoying the shit out of Louis to keep him straight.

Everyone wishes Louis good luck when it’s time for him to go. He gets a hug from each of them including Harry which should be more than enough but somehow it just isn’t. The goodbye kisses he and Harry now share are an integral part of Louis’ day, just like all the immature catcalling they’re forced to endure while it happens. Louis’ cheeks had turned bright red the first time they ever kissed in front of the boys. He can’t even remember which one of them leaned in first that morning, only that the entire fucking country probably heard their friends being obnoxious as fuck about it.

No one is shocked today when Louis doubles back into the kitchen and Harry eagerly pushes up to lean over the table so their lips can meet. They keep it short and sweet so no one whistles or breaks into a round of applause as is customary when he and Harry don’t want to say goodbye. The few seconds they manage today aren’t nearly long enough, but they’ll have to do until Louis gets home this afternoon.

“Have a good day,” Harry tells him with soft eyes like he wishes Louis didn’t have to go. Louis would gladly stay, but the lake can’t save itself on its own so, sadly, he’s needed there.  

“I will,” Louis promises him. “You too, yeah?”

“ _Aww. You too, yeah_?” a high-pitched and extremely Zayn-sounding voice echoes making everyone smirk. Harry doesn’t mind, but Louis makes damn sure to bump into him on his way out the door. And if a bit of coffee just so happened to splash onto his best friend’s shoes as a result, well, Louis doesn’t really see the issue.

Eight hours seem even longer than usual being out on the lake with a team of other people. Whenever Louis is working in his office alone he gets to chat with Harry all day. He receives funny videos of him coaching Niall at the gym or even just the two of them lounging around the house doing nothing at all. The days that Liam has off from the hospital are the best because he spends the majority of the time catching up on sleep while Niall and Harry draw on various parts of his body in permanent marker.

Sailing around toxic waters isn’t really the best place for phones, so today Louis just has to trust that Harry was okay transcribing whole symphonies into guitar pieces and that Liam hasn’t murdered him and Niall for coloring his toes like a rainbow. Louis leaves as soon as he’s able to though. He ditches his team and the lake the moment the clock strikes five and doesn’t look back.

He’s got a boyfriend to see after all.

\---

Liam and Niall greet him and ask him about his day as soon as he walks through the door, but Louis can only focus on their questions for a minute before his gaze starts drifting up the stairs to where he knows Harry is waiting for him. His friends quickly notice that his mind is elsewhere, waving him off with fake annoyance so Louis can stop pretending to listen.

“I’ll just be a minute,” he says, already half-way up the stairs. “I’m just going to say hello to Haz.”

“Oh. _Right_.” Liam snorts.

“N-No, really,” Louis promises from the top of the staircase. “I’ll be right back and then we’ll talk dinner. Er- I’ll cook! Yeah. I’ll do chicken!” The last thing Louis hears is Niall saying he’d be better off eating Liam than waiting for Louis to make dinner. Honestly, Louis can’t disagree once he steps into his bedroom to find Harry sitting in the middle of his mattress with a book thicker than Louis’ forearm in his lap and wearing a whole lazy-day ensemble selected from Louis’ wardrobe.

“Lou! You’re back,” Harry smiles letting the giant book slam shut on itself.

The room smells of nail polish and remover so Louis hesitates before jumping up on the bed and ruining all of Harry’s hard work. Harry’s fingers are still electric blue but his toes now match where they had been a dark mauve before. Judging by the way one of his legs is folded underneath him, his nails have been dry for a while now which is perfect because Louis has been waiting to kiss him just as long.

Harry hums the moment their lips touch, eagerly guiding Louis to lie down in his open arms. “I heard you when you came in,” he grins once he pulls back to kiss down Louis’ neck. “I heard Niall and Li complaining about dinner.” Louis couldn’t care less about what’s happening downstairs. Not when Harry’s kissing him like he’s been dying to do so all day.

“Niall whining over food? What else is new?” he quips.

The small chuckle he lets out at his own joke ends in a sharp intake of breath when Harry drags his teeth over the length of his collarbone kicking his pulse up a few beats.

“God, I missed you today,” Harry whispers. He captures Louis’ lips again, pulling him closer and closer until he’s straddled over a narrow pair of hips.

“Missed you too. Always do,” Louis admits, their hot breaths mingling as Harry’s hands travel the length of his body from shoulder to bum and become transfixed there, his grip tightening the longer and harder Louis kisses him.  

This is probably why their housemates ignored Louis when he promised to only be a moment or two saying hello to Harry. Innocent kissing and laughter is how it always starts but then somehow they get here, panting down each other’s throats and writhing against one another as though years have kept them apart instead of just a few hours.

He gently bites down onto Harry’s bottom lip and suddenly there’s a fist caught in Louis’ hair and one lone hand forcing Louis’ hips down so hard that he can feel Harry hardening up between them. It’s nothing new. Actually, it happens all the time since both of them are usually aching by the time they find the will to separate after a day apart. They haven’t really discussed sex yet but the allusion of it is always there and more obvious each time they end up together like this.

Louis rolls his hips in a tight circle over Harry’s lap, grinning when the small motion forces a strangled sound of pleasure out of his boyfriend’s mouth.

“You okay, love?”

His boyfriend gives a frantic nod of his head but he isn’t able to give much more than that. Currently, he’s having trouble with rudimentary skills such as coherent speech, too busy trying feel Louis on every inch of his body to say anything.

Louis chuckles just before teasing him again, watching as Harry’s eyebrows knit together and his teeth sink down into his bottom lip from the torture of barely-there friction in a place he wants it most.

He refrains from tormenting Harry further by repeating the motion a third time even though it feels just as good on Louis’ end. Their touches are getting heavy even for Louis’ taste verging on the side of dry humping which is still vastly new territory for them. Louis is the official line drawer when it comes to how far is far enough because in truth, they’re not ready for more just yet, especially in Harry’s case. This is his first relationship _ever_. They’ve only been together a few weeks; one glorious month, so they’re taking things slow. Perhaps a bit _too_ slow Louis guesses when his hips still and Harry whines at the loss of contact. However, he quickly remedies the situation by taking matters into his own desperate hands. _Literally._

“Er...”

Louis freezes with wide eyes when he feels Harry shove his hand between them and down the front of his own joggers. It’s such an unexpected twist of events that Louis pulls back just to make sure he isn’t hallucinating Harry determinedly getting himself off with every quick jerk of his fist. His light green eyes have never been darker or more crazed than when their gazes lock.

“What?” he pants through swollen lips, bitten red by both of them over the past few minutes. He looks so fucking beautiful. Louis has to actively force his brain to process something other than Harry shamelessly touching himself right in front of him. Like, breathing for instance because his lungs are most certainly not doing that for him anymore.

His amazement only lasts a few more seconds before Harry’s jerking and coming all over the inside of his joggers. _Louis’_ joggers more accurately. Not that he’s complaining. When he looks down between them his own dick twitches from the dark spot seeping through the fabric and Harry’s exposed lower stomach glistening with wet streaks that managed to escape the confines of his waistband.

 _Fuck_ , _shit, holy fuck._

He’s forced to stop gawking when Harry uses his dirty hand to tilt his chin back up to where they can see each other. The smooth tongue expertly mapping out the inside of Louis’ mouth is less frenzied than it was a couple of minutes ago now that Harry isn’t hell-bent on getting off, but no less eager to taste Louis and make his brain short-circuit.

The room is quiet once Harry’s lips slow to an eventual stop leaving Louis breathless against his headboard, still too stunned to say anything when Harry smiles over at him like any other day Louis rushes home from work to see him.

“Are you okay?” he chuckles, his eyes growing with concern when Louis’ jaw doesn’t attempt to close, but he can’t help it. Louis just witnessed the most spectacular thing he’s ever seen. He’s still witnessing it now as Harry shimmies out of the ruined bottoms he’s wearing and aims them into the clothes bin across the room leaving him bare. Louis may never be okay again.

“Yeah. I’m- I’m great. Peachy,” he answers distractedly, his attention now drawn to the perfection of Harry’s long, toned legs and the perfect shape of his bum when he waltzes over to the wardrobe and steals a new pair of joggers to wear.

His brow furrows again when he comes back to the bed and Louis is still blankly staring at him with signs of pain etched across his face. He glances down at Louis’ lap noticing the thick line of his erection imprisoned inside his jeans and undergoing a death grip from his fist from fear of spilling right now.

“Oh,” he says with an easy grin. “Would _you_ like to-?”

“N-Nope. I’m okay. I’m in control.” Louis lies with a feeble nod of his head that makes Harry blink at him in confusion. Louis has never been less in control in his life. He’s actually sweating right now. How the hell did he get here?

“Well, you’d probably feel a lot better if you did. I always do,” Harry shrugs. “The act of masturbation is completely natural. It’s also healthy.” It is, and yet the image of Harry doing that in here whenever Louis is _not_ here sends dirty little chills down his spine.

His dick twitches so hard from his thinking about it he whines at the back of his throat as a release instead of embarrassing himself in front of his boyfriend. Jesus, his balls are going to explode if he doesn’t come soon.

“I- I’ll just be a minute,” Louis says, wincing as he stands up and waddles over to the door. This probably won’t even take ten seconds.

“Or, you could stay here if you want,” Harry suggests. “The mattress always feels really nice afterwards.”

The various implications of that image are almost too much for Louis to consider as his chest rises and falls with new, urgent breaths. “I- The bathroom,” he tries. “ _Fuck_. I just have to- Excuse me,” he manages before rushing out of the room. The creak of the door opening and closing gains the attention of his housemates who all call his name, including Zayn who must’ve just arrived. Louis ignores every one of them as he barricades himself in the bathroom, his hand already working around himself the moment the lock catches.

Whenever alone, his mind always conjures up all the usual sexy images he keeps of Harry like the sleepy, naked grin he wears first thing in the morning or the way his hands feel running over his body every time they kiss. That usually does it for him so that he’s coming in a matter of minutes, but right now all he can see behind lidded eyes is Harry touching himself in his bed with flushed cheeks and his eyes squeezed shut as he came apart at the demise of his own hand.

Louis had never seen his boyfriend like that before and now he can’t see anything else as he presses his forehead against the woodgrain of the door and finally spills over his own fist with so much force his legs try to collapse in on themselves. The pitiful sound he makes is bitten off, mostly absorbed by the painful grip his teeth have on his bottom lip, but even so he knows without a doubt that Harry still heard it. He hears everything, probably even the way Louis’ heart is pounding in his chest knowing they’ve just crossed a line and coincidentally, _Louis_ is the one who isn’t ready.

Honestly, he was just supposed to be saying hello. What the fuck?


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning. It gets smutty.

Harry hands him a dried plate to put away later that evening and Louis’ stomach unexpectedly erupts into a million panicked little butterflies when their fingertips overlap. It’s the same reaction Louis had when they accidentally bumped into each other while Harry helped him follow through on his promise to cook dinner, and then again half an hour earlier when Harry kissed him after finding Louis stalling outside the bathroom with the evidence of what he’d just done drying into the front of his jeans.

Every time they touch, Louis is transported back to that moment. And each time Harry adjusts the waistband of his fresh joggers, Louis can’t help but wonder if they’ve ever received the same treatment as the others.

Louis rarely does the laundry around here so it’s not like he’d notice. Maybe Harry has been coming all over his clothes for months and he simply never knew. Heat pools in his stomach and the apples of his cheeks, realizing he wouldn’t exactly mind that being the case.

It’s nearly seven o’clock which is usually the hour of dread for Louis because that’s when Harry’s shift at the pub starts. However, today Louis is quite okay with him leaving. For once, he actually needs some time alone, mostly just so he can get his shit together and give his heart a break from stuttering every time his boyfriend so much as breathes on him.

Harry darts up the stairs to change into an outfit of his own once he notices how late it’s getting. Niall selflessly offers to drive him to the pub even though he’s not on the schedule for tonight. He claims he’s just going so he can say hello to some people. Everyone in the house smirks because they all know that actually translates into Niall saying hi to Lisa because they haven’t worked together in over two weeks and Niall has yet to realize _why_ that bothers him so much. Louis must admit it’s nice being on the other side of that kind of oblivion.

Everybody waves the two of them off when it’s ten minutes till, but Harry doubles back to the kitchen before leaving, almost forgetting the most important person in the midst of all his goodbyes.

“Bye, Lou! See you tonight,” he promises before tilting Louis’ chin up to meet him in a quick kiss that just leaves Louis in even more of a state knowing exactly where that hand has been. “Love you!” he calls over his shoulder.

“B-Bye, Haz. Love you,” Louis echoes a beat late drawing the attention of his best friend who shoots him a narrowed glance from the kitchen table once the front door slams shut.  

“Alright, that’s it. What’s with you?” he demands coming over into Louis’ territory at the sink to help put away the rest of the dishes. “You’ve been acting weird all night. Or _weirder_ than usual I guess,” he smirks. He stops when Louis shoots him a hard glare. “I mean, you burned a pot of rice for fuck’s sake.”

He also burned himself on the edge of a frying pan watching Harry discreetly adjust himself in his joggers due to oversensitivity. Zayn’s lucky the house isn’t currently engulfed in flames.

“So?” Louis demands right back, rolling his eyes at Zayn’s keen perception. “Rice is tricky sometimes.”

“No. It’s really not. It’s on the same level as water,” he laughs. He stops doing that too, now rolling his eyes and adopting a more serious appearance when Louis doesn’t find the humor in his joke. “Okay fine, I’ll stop teasing,” he relents. “What’s wrong?” he asks with sincerity. “Really?”

Louis’ fine. He simply suspects his wide eyed, smiley boyfriend is a secret sex fiend. Or at least that’s the gist of it anyway. Zayn raises an expectant eyebrow at him when he seems reluctant to answer. Louis glances around the empty room. Liam’s out for a run, Niall is out pining after his co-worker, and Harry is gone too. It’s not like there’s anyone here to judge.

“I was with Harry earlier and we were, well… you know,” he mumbles. “ _Together_ upstairs.”

It’s slight, but Zayn’s eyebrows raise about a millimeter when he looks at him. “Really?” he frowns. “But, I thought you two hadn’t yet.”

“We haven’t. We _didn’t_ ,” Louis corrects himself even though Harry most certainly did. It’s the closest they’ve ever gotten. “It’s not a big deal or whatever. I just think he may be interested in the possibility of it happening soon? I just – I didn’t know we were there yet. I didn’t know _he_ was already there.”

“Of course he’s already there,” Zayn laughs. “Harry’s been there for months. Haven’t you ever checked your history after he uses your laptop? He likes pretty decent stuff,” he says approvingly. “He’s got good taste.”

If what Zayn is smirking about is true then even him and everyone else in this house knows Louis’ boyfriend better than him. Louis groans out loud getting a face full of damp dish towel in the process.

“ _How_ did I miss all of this?” he whines.

“I have no idea. Have I told you my idiot theory?” Zayn snorts aloud when Louis elbows him in the ribs. He holds up his hands in surrender to stop him from doing it again and then forces himself to stop laughing. “I’m just kidding, Lou. You’re not really an idiot.” Louis sure feels like one. He thought he and Harry were ages away from anything having to do with sex. “And whatever it is you’re freaking out about is irrelevant because the two of you love each other,” he says. “That’s the only thing that really matters here.”

They do love each other and on most days they’re extremely happy together. If that were to ever change, Louis would be devastated.

“He was technically just born six months ago,” Louis mutters after a while. Which is really a moot point considering Harry’s a fully functioning adult capable of making his own choices. And then there’s the fact that he’s a fucking _genius_. If he thinks they’re ready to take their relationship another step forward then who is Louis to tell him he’s wrong?

“That’s quite the dry spell,” Zayn jokes. “ _One_ month usually does me in.”

“I just don’t want to fuck up by rushing things that shouldn’t be rushed.” Harry’s new to this. He’s new to everything really and it feels like a lot of responsibility.

“Lou, you were the first person he ever saw. You were his first friend, his first kiss, his first love; _everything_ ,” Zayn grins. “What’s one more first if it’s with you?”

When he puts it like that Louis feels dumb for worrying at all.

“I hate it when you’re right.”

“You must stay mad a lot then,” Zayn smiles. “So, are you going to talk to him?” he asks in that soft, supportive voice he only uses when Louis legitimately needs it.

“Yeah,” Louis decides with a long sigh, resolved to handle this as maturely as possible. “I guess I could bring it up.”

“Well, good. I think you definitely should,” Zayn says, playfully elbowing him in the side, but it feels more like an _I’m proud of you_ than anything else. “Just…you know. Make sure to do it when I’m not around. I love you both but I don’t need the soundtrack of whatever goes down _after_ the big talk burned into my memory. It’s bad enough living with you two as it is. There are some things that can never be unheard,” he grimaces. “Like just last weekend when Harry must’ve done something out of this world because Liam and Niall and I were just sitting here having lunch as usual and then there was this loud thump against the ceiling that shook the fucking house and then the _moan_ you let out was just like-”

“ _And_ you just ruined it,” Louis says over Zayn’s _detailed_ auditory account of him and Harry rolling around in bed together until they miscalculated and rolled right off it. “We’re loud sometimes. I get it. We’ll work on it, but, you know what, Z? That was really good for you. Five whole minutes of _not_ being a dick. I’m impressed.”

Zayn raises a skeptical eyebrow with a murmured, “Really? Because I’m impressed the two of you could still walk.”

\---

It’s later that night after Louis has crawled into bed– the scene of the crime– that he thinks about his and Zayn’s earlier conversation and curiosity gets the better of him. He grabs his laptop from across the room and curls up against his headboard with bated breath as he scrolls through his browser history. There are hundreds of thousands of searches and websites ranging from neuroscience to how to bake the perfect chocolate cake. There are so many random things there that Louis can’t even come up with a system for exploring them all. He’s just clicking links at random until he finds the one he needs. The repeat one that Harry seems to only visit in the mornings after most everyone has gone off to work.

Internet porn can be a scary place so he has no idea what to expect when he opens the first one. Perhaps something really intense that Louis wouldn’t have ever pegged Harry to be into or maybe even something so unrealistic that Louis is out of his depth. There’s none of that though. All the couples Harry has watched _look_ like actual couples, both gay and straight, and nothing super scary is taking place. Actually, the videos he likes are quite nice like Zayn said. They’re sensual and sweet and so incredibly Harry that Louis grins and shakes his head at himself for assuming he didn’t know him as well as he thought.

Louis closes his laptop almost laughing at himself for expecting the worst. When lies down, his sheets smell like the one person on Earth he wishes he could see right now. It’s barely even eleven o’clock, so unfortunately Harry won’t be home for at least another hour or so. Louis reaches for his phone and sends him a quick message anyway, just to let him know he’s thinking about him.

_‘Hey, you. Miss you. Love you. Can’t wait until you’re back xx’_

He knows he won’t get a response. Harry has probably already taken his break and he’s not supposed to be on his phone behind the bar, but just knowing he’ll read that at some point tonight and smile makes Louis feel better about the way he acted today.

All he wants is to have him here.

It’s late when Harry finally gets home. Louis can tell because his brain is still slow and half-asleep when someone carefully slides into bed behind him and snakes their arms around his waist.

“Hey,” Harry grins against his neck.

“Hey, babe.” Louis turns over in his arms breathing in his scent that is slightly masked by the smell of the pub, but Louis can still recognize it. He’d recognize it anywhere. “How was work tonight?” he yawns.

“Good. Really busy at the end, but I got to speak French all night with two of the girls there,” he happily relays. That statement only makes Louis’ brow furrow.

“ _French_?” he frowns. “When’d you learn that one?” As far as he knew, Harry had taught himself Spanish, Japanese, Italian, and he was working on a bit of Arabic with Zayn. Louis guesses the French went over his head just like Harry’s affinity for romantic pornography.

“I didn’t know very much until tonight, but now I know loads.”

“Well, I’m glad you picked up another language. _In six hours_ ,” Louis chuckles.

“Thanks,” he beams. “Do you know any French, Lou?”

Harry has offered many times to help him learn another language. Louis struggles enough just speaking English and he’s been doing that since he was two. “Er-I know exactly one phrase,” he grins. It got him through a four-day long school trip to Paris. “ _Où sont des toilettes?”_ Even half-asleep Louis knows how to ask for those.

“ _Oh_. That’s an… interesting one,” Harry snorts.

“Yeah, but in any language it’s the only one you ever _truly_ need,” Louis teases back.

He yawns again and this time his eyes start to close against his will. He’s already drifting back off when he feels Harry press his lips to his forehead and then lets them rest there. Feeling his grin is almost as good as seeing it.  

“Love you,” Louis tells him. “Glad you’re home.”

“Love you too. Go back to sleep,” Harry whispers as his embrace tightens around him.

Harry won’t be there when he wakes up again. They’ve tried it out a couple of times, but Harry still doesn’t rest well outside of his tub. In a few minutes, he’ll have slipped away to go sleep where he’s most comfortable, but for now they’re both alright just lying next to each other.

*

As expected, Louis rolls over into a cool, empty space the next morning. He quickly draws his feet back to the warmth of the middle of the bed until he’s brave enough to get out of it. The sound of his door creaking open takes him by surprise a minute later when two steaming mugs appear in the doorway before the person carrying them does.

It’s Harry of course who tiptoes in and then flushes pink when he notices Louis grinning at him from the bed.

“I didn’t mean to wake you. I’m sorry.” Louis wakes him up by banging on the bathroom door almost every day. The idea of Harry apologizing to him for doing the same is preposterous, especially when he has given Louis the greatest gift of all by bringing him his morning tea.

“No, you didn’t, babe. I was already up.” He was just on his way to go see if Harry was up too when the temperature of his sheets stopped him.

Harry sets their mugs down on the bedside table and then reclaims his spot on the bed. The press of their lips is warm when Harry leans in making Louis forget all about his cold feet.

“Good morning.”

“Morning,” Louis says back, stealing another kiss from his boyfriend and then another just to keep him there.

Harry grins and falls right into the trap, allowing himself to be pushed back onto the pillows. They don’t get to start very many days like this. This sort of calm is only reserved for the weekends when neither of them has anywhere to go and their time together feels endless.

The sleep that had still been lingering in Louis’ bones gets replaced with little sparks of energy that come alive everywhere they touch. He ends up straddled over Harry’s hips again after a while, teasing his boyfriend with suggestive rolls of his hips that don’t really mean anything until Harry’s breaths become so ragged that he’s gasping for air as he holds onto him. Louis can feel his grip tightening around his thighs just like before, but when Harry removes one shaky hand to find relief for himself Louis leans down to whisper in his ear.

“Can I do it for you?”

His question makes Harry freeze right where he was about to shove a hand down the front of his joggers. His jaw his hanging open as he blinks up at Louis with wide eyes, searching Louis’ face for signs of this being a joke.

“Can I? Would you mind?” Louis repeats, grinning when Harry quickly nods his head yes and then shakes it no to answer both of his questions. His eyes follow every movement that Louis makes as he sits back on the bed and slides the waistband of Harry’s bottoms down his thighs. Harry’s already so hard that he’s leaking, his breath catching in his throat when Louis fearlessly wraps a hand around his base. The sight of his naked boyfriend is one that Louis is almost used to after months of constant exposure, however, finally getting to touch? Louis can’t believe it’s happening.

The back of Harry’s head sinks into the pillow as Louis smoothly works his fist over him. Harry lets out a content sigh as easy as Louis’ pace, blindly reaching out with one hand in a silent request for Louis to come closer. The kiss that Harry pulls him into is unlike any other before it with how much Harry’s lips are trembling against his.

“Feel good, love?” Louis asks.

Harry gives a slow nod to match the soft whine now reverberating at the back of his throat as Louis picks up the speed. Their lips find one another again, but separate after only a few seconds when a particularly good twist of his wrist has Harry’s hips leaving the bed in search of more.

Harry makes a sound of protest when Louis briefly removes his hand from him, however his very vocal complaint soon turns to nothing but the sound of air rushing into his lungs too quickly when Louis resumes stroking him and then ducks down to catch all the moisture leaking onto his fist with the tip of his tongue. 

He glances up at the pillows to make sure such a bold move was okay with Harry before sliding his lips over the whole tip. He’s only applying gentle suction to go along with his hand but it’s enough to have the muscles of Harry’s stomach jumping from the effort of holding it together.

It’s all over much faster than Louis would’ve liked after finally getting to taste him, but as soon as he took Harry down the back of his throat he was already too far gone to stop the inevitable. Louis could feel it about to happen, noticing the sound of his quick breaths and the anxious look on Harry’s face when Louis found him practically chewing through his own lip, nearly choking Louis when he came with a hard lurch.

Louis’ ears are still ringing with the cry he let out when he lies down next to Harry, carding through his sweat-damp hair and scratching over his flat tummy as his breathing slows. He watches little goosebumps rise up along his neck each time his fingers brush over the area where Harry’s bellybutton would be. Louis helps soothe them by pressing his lips to his fevered skin, and slowly, Harry begins to move, tilting his head so that Louis’ next kiss lands right on his lips.

Harry licks into his mouth with an eagerness that Louis definitely wouldn’t be able to muster so soon after coming, but he doesn’t protest it in the slightest. He lets Harry thank him and ruin him until his lips are numb from overuse and he feels as though his skin could ignite at any moment. Regrettably, he forces himself to pull away before he gets so hard that he winds up in the same embarrassing predicament as yesterday but Harry is already hastily untying his drawstring.

“H-Haz, you don’t have to,” he stops him. “It’s okay if you don’t.” Louis getting the chance to suck Harry off felt wonderful, but it was also something he felt completely comfortable doing because he’s no stranger to oral sex. Harry is as far as Louis knows. Everything they do together is a first-time experience for him and Louis wants them all to be great and on Harry’s terms.

“But I want to,” Harry pleads. “I want to do what you just did, Lou. Please?” Louis swallows hard, the back of his throat stinging as Harry implores him with dark green eyes. “Please?”

Harry already has a firm grip around the top of his joggers just waiting for Louis to say yes. All it takes is a single nod for Harry to yank them down his thighs so fast that Louis’ eyes miss the action. Within seconds, Louis is completely bare in record speed and straining where his dick is leaking across his stomach. Any time before now that Harry has seen him naked has been accidental but this sure isn’t. Neither is the way that Harry examines every inch of his skin with lust. He has always suspected that Harry wants him this way, but it still sends chills racing down Louis’ arms and legs to have it confirmed.

His dick is so heavy that it’s painful where it’s curved and resting near his bellybutton. A small whimper escapes him when Harry reaches out to touch him but then draws his hand back out of uncertainty like maybe he’s going it about it the wrong way.

“Just do whatever feels right for you. Whatever feels natural,” Louis encourages him.

He’s never had to coach someone through getting him off before. Every other person he’s been with already had all the mechanics squared away but Harry looks determined to do this for him and to do it correctly so Louis wants to help.

“It’s just like when you do it to yourself, Haz. Think about what feels good for you.”

Harry seems less intimidated with every new piece of advice Louis gives until he’s reaching out again and committing to taking Louis into his hand. Just the feeling of his warm palm against his skin has Louis hissing through gritted teeth as Harry dulls the ache of his erection.

He starts stroking him in a very calculated motion that turns more languid after raising a questioning eyebrow.

“Is this okay? Is this good?”

At this point, any sort of relief at all feels heavenly. “That’s wonderful. _Perfect_ ,” Louis sighs as Harry steadily releases the pressure that had built up.

Harry watches his reactions to different things he tries, reading them and then adjusting his approach to what works best just like he did when he was learning to bake or kiss. Harry has experienced a lot of firsts in the past six months that have made him a little unsure, but he never flounders for long. He’s a fast learner and getting Louis off is no different.

Within two minutes he’s perfected the art of giving a hand job, leaving Louis close to tears from how incredible it feels to have every one of his buttons pushed just right. He’s so close that his thighs are shaking and then like a deathblow to his sanity Harry takes him into his mouth and nothing else makes sense inside Louis’ brain anymore.

He’s done for almost as soon as Harry begins which would be mortifying if he were lying here with anybody else but Harry looks so immensely pleased with himself that Louis forgets to be embarrassed. The image of Harry’s eyes widening in surprise when Louis suddenly spilled down his throat will now forever be branded into his memory, and for that Louis is grateful because he’s not sure he could survive it happening twice.

“Hmm. That seemed really quick,” he says using the back of his hand to wipe away the giant mess splattered across his mouth.

That’s because it _was_ really quick. Louis didn’t stand a chance. Harry finished him off in half the time it took Louis to do the same, but he’s not complaining. It was fucking fantastic. A breathless chuckle trickles out of Louis from how disappointed his boyfriend looks that he could only last five minutes under his touch. Less than if they’re being technical.

“Well, stop being so amazing and maybe I’ll last longer next time,” he laughs.

“Next time?” Harry blinks over at him.

Something about those words must excite him because Harry has never grinned harder and his mouth has never looked filthier tinted in a bright cherry red. His dick twitches just imagining them trying for a round two anytime soon. Even though Louis’ pretty sure it’d kill him.

“I can’t go again. I’ll come and die. I need a minute,” Louis says making Harry fondly roll his eyes at him.

“No, Lou,” he laughs. “I just meant I wasn’t even expecting it _this_ time,” he admits looking so thrilled it happened anyway. “I had wanted to mention it before, but I didn’t want to make you try things with me that you didn’t want to.”

And coincidentally, Louis didn’t want to rush Harry into trying things he wasn’t ready for. If they had just talked instead of trying so hard to protect one another they could’ve gotten here sooner.

“Harry, I love you,” Louis tells him. “I want whatever you want, love. Whatever makes you happy.”

“Whatever makes you _and_ me happy. Both of us,” Harry kindly corrects him before leaning down to connect their lips. Louis couldn’t agree more.

“And just think,” Harry says after he pulls back wearing Louis’ favorite version of his happy smile. “We still have so many other things to try together. Like, did you know there’s a whole ancient Indian text about nothing but sexual pleasure? It’s quite fascinating. Apparently, there are over _two-hundred_ sexual positions listed.”

“ _Oh_. Er- That sounds…” _Painful._ “Really fun,” he decides on instead. “Though, sadly I don’t think we’re doing any of them right now,” Louis laughs with a pitiful look down at his lap. “Sorry.” He just had one of the best orgasms of his entire life and he hasn’t even had his morning tea yet. He’s going to need at least a few hours to recover as opposed to Harry’s super-human refractory period which is basically nonexistent as they’ve just learned. It must be nice.

“I know we aren’t having sex right now,” he laughs. “But, one day we will, right?” he asks with hopeful eyes. “Like, I know we technically just _did_ , but, um, I mean the other kind,” he explains with a blush that only spreads the more Louis grins watching his boyfriend play with his fingers. “We’ll make love? B-Because I’ve heard that’s different.”

How Harry can sit down and read about sex from an ancient book and be shy talking about it all at once, Louis has no idea, but regardless, he likes listening to him try.

Louis covers his hands over top of Harry’s anxious ones to still them and then brings their lips together in a sure kiss. He doesn’t know why Harry was so nervous to ask him that when Louis has been looking forward to the same thing.

“Of course, Haz,” he promises. “Someday we will. I can’t wait.”

*

Someday comes a lot quicker than Louis had in mind a few weeks later when he and Harry get back from their two-month anniversary date night to an empty house. Louis steps around Harry after they turn on the lights with an eerie feeling in his gut from the silence because their house is many things, but quiet is never one of them.

“Where’d they go?” Harry asks looking just as bewildered.

When he and Harry left this afternoon everybody was hanging out and doing typical lazy Saturday things. The only difference Louis can spot between this afternoon when he and Harry left to go visit the natural science museum and now is a random box sitting on the coffee table. He walks over towards it and notices a small piece of paper folded up on top of its loose flaps.

_‘This arrived today after you left. Figured you’d want some privacy tonight given the occasion so we’ll stay out of your hair. Don’t tear the house down. We need it. Love you both.’ –N, L, and Z._

Harry, who read the note in a cursory glance over Louis’ shoulder, is already digging through the box addressed to their house number but without any specific name. He gasps aloud when he pulls out a thick leather-bound book titled _The Art of Kamasutra_.

“Did you seriously order this for us?!” he exclaims as he speeds through the first few dozen pages in his eagerness.

Louis did almost two weeks ago. It’s a rare version translated into English as well as Hindi which he figured Harry would have fun figuring out for a few days. The shipping box is a little banged up so he assumes it was no easy task delivering it here.

“Thank you so much!” Harry beams.

“You’re welcome,” Louis laughs, accepting all the appreciative kisses Harry presses to his mouth.

“Can we read it?” he asks once he pulls away.

Five minutes ago Louis thought they’d end their night fighting for couch space with their housemates and squabbling over who’s responsible for eating all the good snacks out of the pantry. If he and Harry wanted some alone time tonight he figured it’d feature hushed hand jobs and blow jobs after everyone else had gone to sleep. With everyone gone, there’s nothing to stop them from getting started right now. 

“Uh, sure. We can skim a few pages if you want,” he shrugs with a surprising amount of cool and composure. Louis’ more than fine with reading a sex book with his boyfriend. He’s fucking buzzing.

When they first get upstairs, everything they read is just funny. There are diagrams of complex positions that they try to emulate which typically end with both of them cackling on the floor fully-clothed because Louis doesn’t have the balance or flexibility for half of them and all the illustrations of limbs flying everywhere just make Harry laugh.

They crawl onto the bed still breathless with laughter from attempting the carousel and failing miserably.

“Well. That one wasn’t so bad,” Louis says, wincing when he flops back on the bed and the new little knot forming at the side of his head takes the brunt of his weight. Their injuries are quite minor considering each of them were dropped at least once, but no one’s bleeding and nothing’s broken so really they can just chalk it up to a fun night of extreme couples yoga.

Harry hears the small gasps Louis makes when he runs his fingers over the spot and pulls Louis closer to him. “Aww, Lou. I’m so sorry,” he chuckles, pressing a kiss to the spot and probably remembering the exact moment a few minutes ago when they both crashed onto the floor.

“I’m okay. I’m just whining,” Louis assures him. It stings a bit but it’s not like it’s unbearable. Actually, Louis forgets about it entirely when Harry’s lips find his to soothe his pain.

It’s so quiet with no one in the house but them. All Louis can hear is their breaths mingling between them and their date-night clothes rustling against sheets as they gravitate towards one another.

When Louis opens his eyes he’s in a different position than where he started lying next to Harry. Harry is lying beneath him now, his chest rising and falling with deep breaths.

“Hi,” Louis smiles feeling a bit breathless too. He pushes the loose strands of Harry’s hair still amazed to this day how beautiful he is. Louis thinks that about him all the time, but it has never been so blatantly obvious as it is when Harry grins back at him. His clover eyes crinkling up and the appearance of his dimples steals his breath away all over again. 

“Hey, Lou.”

He feels the tips of Harry’s fingers easing beneath his shirt, teasing the skin there until cool goosebumps rise up in their wake. Louis glances down at their bodies, comfortably slotted together without any design or planning. No thought went into how perfectly Louis fits draped between Harry’s long legs. They didn’t need any book or manual to find themselves wrapped up in each other this way. They got here one-hundred percent on their own.

The feeling of Harry hard and pressing against his hip draws Louis’ attention to his own erection, a tense situation in which neither of them moves, too afraid of breaking the moment.

“So, this position’s pretty easy,” Louis jokes, though he can’t really bring himself to laugh. Not when Harry is watching him with so much heat and longing burning behind his gaze.

“It is,” Harry agrees. “It’s my favorite so far.” He’s blinking up at Louis with a hopefulness that makes Louis’ heart race about a thousand beats per minute. There’s something in the way he smiles that lets Louis know exactly what his boyfriend is hoping to hear from him.

“Um, we could try it out. Like, properly. If- If you want of course,” Louis suggests. He lets out a nervous breath and then hangs his head in a laugh when Harry jokingly asks if they have to keep their clothes on for this one too. “No, we don’t,” he chuckles. “I was kind of hoping we could get rid of those and it’d just be you and me.”

“Okay,” Harry laughs. “Me too.”

“Okay, then.”

He can’t believe they’re really about to do this.

“So… are we going to stay just like this or should we switch? I’m not sure, but I know you’ve done this before so. Maybe we do both ways? I- I don’t know. I don’t want to hurt you.” His cheeks maintain a pink glow as he talks because it’s not very often that Harry _doesn’t_ know things. This is big for them though, and Harry’s clearly a little past his comfort level trying something he’s never done where Louis’ well-being is involved.

For most of the sex Louis has had in his life he’s been the bottom so he isn’t some big expert on being a top. He didn’t know what Harry would want when the time finally came, but he looks comfortable lying beneath him and Louis wants him to stay that way.

“I think maybe me taking the lead is best for now,” Louis says and he can see the anxiety melting behind Harry’s eyes. “Next time we can try it the other way. Or not. I’m fine with whatever you’re comfortable with.”

“Okay, but I want to try everything eventually,” Harry tells him. Louis figured that was the case when they were playing around with the Kamasutra book and they kept reversing roles, but that was just pretend.  

“Next time, you get to top. I promise,” Louis grins before kissing him on the nose and then hopping up to search through his junk drawer for the lube and condoms he hasn’t touched in a year. He finds them near the back, feeling a bit nervous himself since it has been so long. Even longer since he had to call the shots though he doesn’t let Harry see it when he comes back to the bed as the picture of calm.

He helps Harry out of his tight jeans and his thin top that barely qualifies as a shirt before working on his own clothes. Louis’ skin can finally breathe once he’s undressed, making him feel a lot less anxious and more excited when he leans down to kiss his boyfriend.

“Ready?” he asks before pouring lube over his fingers.

Harry’s legs open up around him, giving Louis the space he needs to reach down and begin to open him up. They’ve never done this so he makes sure to take it slow, carefully easing in one finger at a time.

Harry is relaxed beneath him, distracted by Louis kissing him as he tries to find his spot. He twists his fingers and his wrists in as many different ways he can think of but Harry remains as still and calm as ever with soft moans falling from his lips. He blinks his eyes open in confusion when Louis removes his fingers with a small sigh he didn’t mean to let out.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, babe. It’s just supposed to feel better than that but- I couldn’t find your spot.” He wants this to be good for Harry and he’s not off to a great start. Maybe his fingers aren’t long enough. Or maybe he’s just out of practice.

“I thought it felt really nice,” Harry grins. “I didn’t want you to stop. You’re doing a great job.”

That makes Louis smile and feel marginally better. He stops fretting altogether when Harry pulls him into a deep kiss. “Thanks,” he says, letting Harry kiss him again and fuel him with determination to make the next part of tonight better for both of them.

He rolls on a condom with surprising dexterity and then reclaims his position between Harry’s legs. If Harry felt any pain while he was being fingered open he didn’t let on, but Louis can tell the stretch is a lot for him when he starts pushing in and the air is punched from his lungs.

“Haz, are you alright? Am I hurting you?” Louis eases up when Harry is too busy holding his breath to answer him.

“NO. Don’t,” he pleads when he can feel Louis’ pulling out of him. “I’m okay,” he says in a much calmer voice once Louis stops moving away. “Just- Just give me a second but don’t pull out.”

Louis waits with his hips pushed partially forward until his lower back aches, but he doesn’t dare move. Not until Harry’s breathing finally evens out and he whispers for Louis to keep going once he’s adjusted to his width. He still takes his time, watching every flicker of Harry’s face as his hips finally come to rest against Harry’s.

Harry’s brow isn’t furrowed anymore, but Louis’ is as he fights the urge to start slamming into the tight heat surrounding him like his body is screaming for him to do. He’s forced to open his eyes and meet Harry’s gaze when he tilts Louis’ chin up and smoothes the fine lines creasing his forehead.

“Hey,” he smiles, stopping Louis’ arms from shaking when he gives them a light squeeze. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Louis nods, working to gain control over himself. “You just feel really, really good.” And if he doesn’t get to move soon he’s going to cry.

“I’m okay too. I’m ready,” Harry whispers in encouragement before locking his ankles around his waist.

Louis attempts a tiny experimental thrust, feeling the drag from Harry’s body light him on fire as he eases himself back in but it’s the best kind of burn. He does it a second time, pulling his hips back a bit more and moaning because Harry is still so tight. He seems alright though so Louis adopts a steady rhythm and kisses Harry through the new sensation of being rocked into.

The little sounds he’d been making around Louis’ fingers are back though much more breathy and erratic. Their lips meet again, but their kisses aren’t as coordinated as before with Louis’ strokes getting longer and more fluid and Harry using his legs to pull him in deeper. All Louis can register besides the hot, slick feeling of Harry’s body is the desperate sound he makes when Louis accidentally slips too far inside of him, finally hitting the sensitive spot he couldn’t find earlier.

Harry scrambles to hold onto him, his blunt nails digging into Louis’ shoulder blades. “Do that again,” he begs. “Please. Fuck.”

He swears again when Louis does what he asks, moaning with his head thrown back into his pillow.

Louis tries not to think too hard about it or how he could come right now just listening to him. He focuses on thrusting into the same spot over and over again until Harry cries out in his ear and covers them both in hot bursts of liquid spilling from his tip. His body pulses around Louis in quick throbs that push him over the edge so quickly it feels like he missed an entire floor of steps going down. He comes into the condom he’s wearing letting the aftershocks of his orgasm milk him dry until he collapses into Harry’s embrace.

His bones have never felt so heavy as when he pulls out of Harry to throw the used condom away. That short trip takes every bit of his energy. When he comes back to the bed he collapses next to Harry rather than on top of him letting just his head rest on Harry’s chest.

“Good?” he pants out, not even having the energy left to compose full sentences. He doesn’t feel too bad about it when all Harry can do is grunt in response with a dopey smile stretched over his face.

He’s never seen someone look like that after bad or mediocre sex so Louis takes his grunt as a win.

“And you? Good?” Harry asks in the same breathless fashion.

Louis hates to give his boyfriend a caveman sound as his answer to one of the best nights of his life, so he uses all his remaining strength to conjure up the only other French he knows.

“ _Oui. Incroyable_. _Croissant!”_ And the most important. _“_ _Je t'aime_.”

He can tell by Harry’s chest jumping up and down with his loud cackle that his accent was awful, but at least he got the gist.

“I love you too,” he giggles.


	9. Chapter 9

The sound of leaves crunching in his ear and a throbbing ache all along his left side is what wakes Harry up, but no matter how hard he tries to pry open his eyes all he sees is blackness.

“ _There is fine_ ,” someone snaps behind him. “ _It’s not like it matters.”_ Harry feels himself being rolled onto his back and then the voice cuts through the air again. “ _Let’s go! Just leave it here!”_

There’s someone else there. The person who tried to roll him over so he can breathe better but he sounds just as scared as Harry feels when he speaks up.

“ _But we can’t just leave. He’s- He’s-”_

 _“Nothing,”_ the other voice snarls.

Harry’s heart clenches in his chest as the two men argue above him and make the decision to leave. He’s not nothing. He tries to call out to them before they go but their hurried footsteps are already light years away from him. He needs them to know that he’s alive and that he’s in pain but his tongue won’t work and no sound comes out of his mouth when he screams.

He sits up in a bed rather than the cold forest floor, gasping for air as if sleep had suffocated him. His heart stops pounding so fast and relief washes over him realizing it was just a dream.

It’s not black anymore as his eyes adjust and take in the familiar shape of Louis’ bedroom as well as Louis himself curled up next to him looking as peaceful and beautiful as he did last night drifting off in Harry’s arms.

Dreams don’t visit Harry very often as they used to thanks to the giant headphones he wears to his usual bed. In the beginning, he had that same nightmare almost every night. He’d hear the same harsh voices; the same heated debate over whether to abandon him there in the woods or actually give him a chance. Harry doesn’t even know if his recurring dream is a real memory from that day or if his brain simply made it all up to fit the horror of what probably happened. It never changes though and it has haunted him since before he can remember. He’s looked it up before. Why people dream what they dream, and if his brain is going to force him to relive the most awful moment of his life over and over again, he wishes it would at least replay the best as well; when he was saved by the best person in the world. 

Thankfully, no one here in real life is tossing him out into the wilderness to fend for himself. There is no dark forest and there are no scary men bickering over whether or not he’s important enough to live. Right now, there’s just one boy softly snoring beside him looking more dreamlike than anything Harry’s mind could ever create, real or invented.

He has his back turned towards Harry and his legs drawn up to his chest, missing the protective shield of Harry’s body that was previously curled around him to ward off the cold. Harry slides back down to the mattress and snakes his arms around Louis’ naked waist, pulling him closer until his back is flush against Harry’s chest.

They’re aligned perfectly this way and he can already feel Louis’ body temperature rising to match his own. The warmth casing him in must feel good because he soon sighs in Harry’s embrace like his touch is all he’s been waiting for. Harry could drift off right here. Just like this. Just like he did last night when he kept promising himself he’d only stay a few minutes more even as his heavy eyes were closing. He sleeps best in the tub. Attempt after attempt of trying to sleep elsewhere has proven that, but he’s happiest by Louis’ side.

“You’re still here,” Louis rasps out when he tries to roll over only to realize someone is blocking his path. He sounds surprised yet delightfully so.

“I’m still here. Never left,” Harry confirms. He grins, feeling his stomach flutter when Louis turns over in his arms to face him and then buries his nose into Harry’s chest.

“Good,” he murmurs, already dropping off again. “That’s my favorite.”

Coincidentally, it’s Harry’s favorite too.

*

It’s a Sunday afternoon when Harry glances up from the bar and Louis makes his entire day just by walking through the pub doors.

Harry only left the house a couple of hours ago after getting a call from a sniffly Sean who’s currently battling the flu and couldn’t come in for his shift. Niall covered for him last night though it’s not like he minded with Lisa working too. Harry usually only works nights but he doesn’t mind helping out. Especially not if his beautiful boyfriend is going to show up wearing joggers and the purple hoodie he practically lives in during the weekends with his hair still as much of a mess as it was when Harry couldn’t keep his hands out of it as they said goodbye. For over half an hour.

“Hey, you,” he smiles across the mostly empty room with his work bag thrown over his shoulder. When he gets to the bar he uses his arms to raise himself up enough to lean over it, only dropping back down to his feet once Harry leans over the bar too and meets him in a kiss.

“What are you doing here?” Not that he minds. Louis showing up at his job is always a pleasure. Harry gladly abandons the glass he was just polishing as Louis takes a seat on the barstool in front of him with a tiny smirk.

“I just want free drinks while I work,” he jokes before easily admitting the real reason for his surprise visit. “I missed you. No one else is at home at the moment and technically it’s still our day and I wanted to see you, so,” he explains with a shrug and a faint blush covering the dozens of tiny freckles along his cheeks.

Their work schedules conflict during most of the week so Sunday _is_ their day. It’s a day where they hardly even leave Louis’ room until their housemates grow concerned and come banging on the door to make sure they’re still alive in there.

Harry slips his fingers into Louis’ over the bar, watching color rise in his cheeks once again even though no one is watching them. His nails are a sparkly green today. There’s some visible on a couple of Louis’ fingers as well simply because Harry couldn’t resist and Louis couldn’t help but give in.

“So, you missed me on our day _and_ you just want free drinks?” Harry teases.

“Well, my boyfriend’s a bartender. Obviously, I expect perks.”

And Harry has no qualms about giving them to him. He reaches under the shelf for one of the pint glasses he just polished and fills it up to the brim with Louis’ favorite and then slides it front of him.

“On the house,” he says just as Louis stuffs more than twice the amount the beer costs into Harry’s empty tip jar with a wink that makes Harry snort. He knew he wouldn’t just accept free beer. That only happens when Zayn is annoying him so Louis steals whatever he’s drinking in retaliation.

“Thanks, fit bartender,” he says before hopping up from the bar and walking towards his favorite booth across the room.

“So, you’re just going to hang out by yourself and watch me work? While you drink?” he chuckles.

Cool chills rush down the backs of Harry’s arms when Louis gives him a lustful glance over after taking a big swallow of his drink. It’s the same look he gives Harry every morning he forgets to cover himself up. Harry should be used to that look by now but it still makes heat flood his stomach.

“Yep. Pretty much,” Louis chirps in response. Harry fondly rolls his eyes watching his boyfriend skip off to admire him from afar. He’s such a weirdo and yet Harry loves him so much.

He resumes polishing all the glasses, peeking up from his task every now and then to catch Louis doing the same thing over the edge of his laptop. There’s no way he’s focusing on anything productive or work-related over there, but it’s fun watching him pretend.

The day shift is pretty quiet with most people at home still sleeping off their hangovers from the night before. There have only been a handful of customers in the two hours since Harry arrived. However, it’s starting to pick up now that the day is bleeding further into afternoon. A group of sweaty men comes in straight off a football pitch somewhere followed by two girls who come in with their laptops just like Louis though they don’t seem to be getting any work done either with their view of the sweaty men.

Other people trickle in and Harry serves them all, pouring drinks and taking food orders as they come. He’s pretty fast by nature even while trying to go slow which is why he’s confused when one man who sits down at the bar snaps his fingers at Harry to demand his attention.

Harry approaches him with a kind smile that doesn’t get returned, but that happens sometimes so he just brushes it off. He learned pretty quickly working here that some people just can’t be pleased no matter what. This man was even brusque with the person accompanying him. A more forgiving man who returns Harry’s smile with an apologetic expression.

“Hi. What can I get you?” Harry greets them, but something in the way the first man’s eyes do a double take and then narrow at him makes him feel uneasy.

No one says anything for a long time as he examines Harry from head to toe with a familiarity Harry can’t understand. As far he knows, he’s never seen these people before.

“Two whiskeys,” he finally grunts out though the suspicion in his eyes never fades.

Harry quickly fills their order and places two shot glasses down on the bar. The time it takes for the man to dig out enough cash to cover the drinks is tense with the two pairs of eyes trailing over the details of Harry’s face while his own eyes are glued to the floor.

As soon as he has the money, Harry turns away from them to deposit it into the register. No one else is waiting to be served so he moves to the opposite end of the bar and resumes polishing the glasses he had been working on before the small lunch rush.

He tries not to, just like he does at home, but he can’t help listening in as the two men whisper behind his back. It gets harder to do when Louis sidles up to the bar to say hello again but his ears still catch the frustrated, _‘We stared at him in that tank for over twenty years. I know our own fucking subject when he’s standing right in front of me still alive!’_

The glass in Harry’s hand shatters listening to the outrage and exasperation in the angry man’s tone from being challenged about something that has Harry’s stomach twisting in on itself. He didn’t think anything about this man was familiar but that terse voice echoes through Harry’s mind, taking him right back to that scene in the woods where it screamed out that he was nothing.

“ _Harry_. Oh my God,” Louis gasps, suddenly behind the bar with him. He takes Harry’s hand in his and quickly starts removing the fragments of glass piercing his skin. “Haz, you’re bleeding all over the place.” Harry blinks away from where the two men are now openly staring at them. He is in fact bleeding. There are streams of blood trickling out of his wounds and onto the floor beneath them.

“I- I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to,” he says making Louis stare at him too like he’s lost it.

“Of course, love. I know,” he nods in understanding. “But we can’t leave your hand like this.” It _was_ just an accident. Harry hadn’t even realized he was squeezing the glass that hard until it exploded under the pressure. Louis reaches up and turns Harry’s face towards him so he can repeat whatever he just said. “Babe, did you hear me? We have to clean this out. Are there bandages somewhere?”

Harry gives a quick nod, grateful when Louis starts guiding them away. They leave the front of the pub and Harry vaguely remembers that he’s not supposed to do that.

“I have to stay at the bar.”

Louis keeps walking, applying pressure to ease the bleeding. “You’re lucky you still have a hand. The bar can wait.”

Louis deposits him on an overturned crate near the storage room when he spots the first aid kit mounted to the wall. He gets to work cleaning his hand, apologizing profusely each time Harry hisses from the sting of the antiseptic spray.

“I’m almost done,” Louis promises as he unwraps a roll of gauze. “Are you sure you’re okay? You seemed upset a minute ago,” he says as he carefully cuts the gauze into squares big enough to cover the cuts in his palm. His eyes widen in surprise when goes to tape the bandages into place and sees that Harry’s hand has stopped bleeding altogether, the deepest parts of his cuts already turning a light pink as if they’re days old.

Louis looks relieved to see he’s okay and yet he keeps holding Harry’s hand. He presses a kiss to it once he tries to meet Harry’s eyes and he’s focus is already back on the door leading to the front.

“Haz,” he whispers to gain his attention. “What happened out there, love? Were those men bothering you?”

In all honesty, they hadn’t done anything to him but Harry has the sick feeling they might have if given the chance. They already left him for dead once before. He doubts they’d have reservations about attempt number two.

“I think I know them,” Harry says eventually, leaving out the part where they think they definitely know him.

“Really?” Louis frowns. “From where?”

“…The lake,” he finally admits feeling dread swirling around in his stomach. Louis stops what he’s doing, blinking up at Harry with as much fear in his eyes as Harry felt five minutes ago realizing all his worst nightmares are true.

They sit in silence for a long time before Harry’s brain starts calculating all the time he has left the bar unmanned.

“I have to go back,” he says but Louis stops him before he can even stand up.

“No, you don’t, Harry. It’s not safe. Those men are dangerous. We’re not going back out there.”

He says it like he knows all of this from experience. Harry never asked Louis _how_ he and Zayn found out so much about him. Clearly, it was no easy task.

“But I can’t just hide back here,” Harry tells him. 

Louis raises an eyebrow in challenge at that. He fixes him with a look of determination, takes out his phone, and then dials Niall to come take over his shift. He hangs up with a look of triumph and puts his phone back in his pocket. “And now we just have to wait for Ni. Then we can leave and get you home where it’s safe.

It could take Niall as long as fifteen minutes to get here. Maybe even twenty if there's traffic. 

“Lou, I’ve been gone too long already. And what about your stuff? Your laptop?” he reminds him. “You left it all out there.”

“It’s just stuff, babe,” he whispers, draining all the fight out of Harry. “If someone wants to take my laptop then they can have it. I can get another one. I can’t get another you.”

Harry stops arguing after that and waits for Niall like Louis suggested because if the situation was reversed Harry would say the exact same thing to him.

Niall arrives sooner than either of them expected and the first thing he does is hug Harry tight around the neck and thank God he’s okay. He takes over behind the bar, getting to work serving all the people that had been waiting as Harry and Louis sneak out in the midst of the chaos. To Harry’s relief, Louis’ things haven’t been stolen. His work bag and laptop are still sitting in the booth he left them in so they stop by to get them before hurrying for the door.

There’s no sign of the two men anywhere, Harry assumes they grew tired of waiting for him to return and just left, but then there they are blocking his and Louis’ path. Standing right in front of the exit they were so close to.

“It’s him. I know it is,” the man with the gruff voice accuses under his breath to the man at his side who had earlier looked quite skeptical of his claim, though he seems more and more convinced now that they’re face to face. “Tell us who you are,” he demands making Harry’s blood run cold.

The milder one looks Harry over, trying to find recognition in his face and short hair before settling on his eyes which Harry couldn’t even open the last time they were face to face. He was the one who tried arguing in Harry’s defense before he was abandoned. He was also the one who rolled Harry onto his back so he could pull air into his weak lungs. He’s not as coldhearted as his partner. That is the only thing that earned Harry any sort of mercy that day in the woods and the only thing that saves him right now as the man’s gaze settles on Louis protectively clinging to Harry’s arm like a lifeline.

“It’s not him,” he decides.

Harry lets out the breath he was holding while the angry man rounds on his friend. “Of course it is. He looks just like him,” he snarls, attempting to stare a hole through the front of his t-shirt where his navel should be.

“It’s not. It can’t be,” the man says again through a disappointed sigh that even sounds real to Harry. “That was over half a year ago.” The man turns to Harry and Louis and gives an apology of all things. “We’re sorry. You just look an awful lot like an old friend of ours, but that's impossible because he’s gone. You can’t be him, so. Sorry. Our mistake,” he says again even after an impressed and knowing glance down at Harry’s unbandaged and unwounded hand that was pouring blood not even half an hour ago. “We’ll go. We were just leaving anyway,” he says on his way out.

“But-” The other man doesn’t seem to want to go, but he eventually blocks out the little voice telling him he’s right and follows his partner’s lead. “Whatever,” he grits out before walking through the door leaving Harry on the other side of it with his boyfriend who immediately wraps his arms around his shoulders and buries his face in Harry’s neck.

“I thought I was going to lose you,” he whispers against his skin. “God, I thought they’d try to hurt you or worse.”

Harry did too. He’s so glad that wasn’t the case. “I’m okay,” Harry shushes him, smiling when Louis kisses his lips like he thought he’d never get to again.

“I was so fucking _scared_ ,” he says in a breathless laugh after he pulls back. “I honestly don’t know what I’d do if something ever happened to you.”

“Me too,” Harry chuckles before connecting their lips again. And as long as Harry has anything to do with it, neither of them will ever have to find out.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> :)

Six Months Later

“ _It’s him this time. Shut up_ ,” Louis hisses at his best friend who just laughs and dodges the forceful slap aimed in his direction.

“That’s what you said the last three times,” Niall points out from Zayn’s other side, making Liam snort a laugh too. Lucky for them Louis’ too far away for his second attempt at a smack to mean anything.

In all fairness, it’s hard to tell who exactly is walking by outside the pub. The design of the windows makes everything look so warped that Harry’s tall frame would look like a fat shadow moving past. However, the long even strides of his boyfriend’s walk are hard to miss, so this new thinner shadow isn’t just some confused drunk patron who didn’t get the memo that tonight is invite only.

“Well, this time it _is_ him!” Louis says making the entire room quiet down in anticipation of his grand entrance.

It’s darker inside than usual when Harry first pokes his head through the doors looking instantly suspicious as to why the main lights are off. He flips them on and jumps, startled by the volume of everybody hidden in the booths and behind the bar who shout happy birthday at him.

Louis can tell he wasn’t expecting any of it based on the bewildered yet excited expression on his face. He and Louis were supposed to be going to the symphony tonight before he got the completely unfortunate and yet totally planned distress call to come into work. He had been so disappointed that it was hard for Louis to keep a straight face as his boyfriend reluctantly traded the new blazer he was planning to wear for a work t-shirt instead. He’ll still get to dress up and wear the blazer of course. He just doesn’t know it’ll be _tomorrow_ night since that’s the date Louis actually bought their tickets for.

Everybody who loves Harry is piled into this room, and after only a year it’s safe to say he has made more friends than Louis has in his twenty-six years. People gravitate towards his energy and they enjoy being around him so much. Louis is no different. He’s about to crawl out of his skin as he waits for everyone else to say hello and congratulate him on his special day. Louis is trying for patience because he doesn’t want to rudely push his way to the front of the line as if he’s special or something. Except everyone knows he sort of is when it comes to Harry. They all get to witness it too after Sean and his new boyfriend finish squeezing Harry half to death and wishing him a great night.

Harry’s gaze finds him once they walk away and makes Louis smile long before his strong arms come down around him and tighten around his waist until they’re chest to chest.

“ _You lied_ ,” he says in chastisement, though the giant smile on his face is anything but cross.

“Only a little,” Louis smirks. “It was just a tiny white lie.” Or rather a series of tiny white lies. Louis has been planning this surprise party for the past month. He couldn’t do it alone of course. Niall, Zayn, and Liam all helped, so the four of them have been lying through their fucking teeth for weeks trying to keep Harry, the person who knows literally everything, out of the loop.

Louis’ smile melts into a quiet sigh and his train of thought goes off track for a bit when Harry pulls him into a kiss much too long and deep for their current location. They have an audience, Louis is sure. He can feel people staring and smirking when they finally pull away, however, he refuses to look anywhere but straight ahead at the pair of green eyes in front of him that are just as bright and beautiful as the night Louis first saw them. He can’t believe that was exactly one year ago.

“You didn’t have to do this, Lou. You know it’s not _really_ my birthday,” Harry says under his breath so the others can’t hear.

This isn’t the day he was born, but it is the anniversary of the day their worlds collided and Harry became a part of their family. They don’t know how long Harry had been wandering around the woods until Louis stumbled across him that night, but the details aren’t important. Harry ended up right where he was supposed to be and now he’s the single most important person in Louis’ life. It was a new beginning for all of them, so why not celebrate it as such?

“What? Of course it’s your birthday,” Louis scoffs. “We’ve got every cheesy birthday related thing we could think of set up just for you. We’ve got drinks, food, gifts, a whole _banner_ ,” he says nodding towards the ceiling where Harry’s name and today’s date are painted in giant letters courtesy of Liam and Niall. They even have a cake whose single sparkly candle in the center makes Harry bark out a laugh along with the other handful of people in the room who are in on the joke. Technically, he’s a year old today, but for appearances sake and to avoid giving awkward answers to awkward questions, they’re going with the ripe old age of twenty-four.

Harry blows out his one candle through a fit of stifled giggles and then rounds on Louis with a fond shake of his head.

“Come here. God, I love you.”

Every time Louis hears that it sends his heart soaring and floods his chest with joy for the both of them. Because there was once a time Louis thought he’d never get to feel this way about someone and all Harry wanted was for someone to look at him the way Louis is right now. He doesn’t know if their love is as epic and important as the kind in movies that Harry desired, but Louis would say they run a very close second.

“I love you back,” Louis says only to him. “Happy birthday, Haz.”

*

They pile into Liam’s car at the end of the night since his early morning shift at the hospital tomorrow has condemned him to sobriety. Harry crawls into the back seat with as much grace as one can expect from a birthday boy with the alcoholic tolerance of a kitten. He leans his head back against the seat with a deep sigh and then smiles like the ceiling of Liam’s car just told him the funniest joke.

“Drunk, my love?” Louis chuckles when he slides in behind him so he can be sandwiched between him and Niall in the middle seat as per usual though he no longer minds it. Harry cracks his eyes open to look at him, now smiling directly at Louis as their hands find one another in the dark.

“No. Just really, really happy,” he answers. And he looks it.

Harry got so many presents that Louis has to help Harry carry them all once they arrive home. They locked the heavy ones in the pub’s office. There was no way they’d be able to handle that many books.

Harry and his long limbs crawl out of the car and then walk him over to the driver’s window to hug Liam goodbye and then to the passenger’s side to hug Niall and Zayn too.

“Text when you’re home,” Louis reminds them once Harry comes back to stand by his side.

“Mmmm, yeah, no. I don’t think we will,” Zayn smirks, knowing full well he’s the _most_ likely of the three of them to let Louis and Harry know they made it back safe. “It’s just two blocks. I think we’ll live,” he says when Louis gives him an unimpressed look.

Louis fondly rolls his eyes as their friends blow kisses at them and scream happy birthday at the top of their lungs as they back out of his and Harry’s drive. Their new neighbors are going to band together and kill them.

“Do you think they’ll remember to text?” Harry asks once they’re gone and their street is quiet again.

“I think they’re idiots. But, yeah. One of them will.” Louis grins feeling a small twinge of longing in his heart for the days when they were all idiots together. The five of them living in one house was madness on most days but it gave Louis some of the best times of his life. Harry presses a kiss to his temple and then slips his hand into Louis’ as they start towards their front door and suddenly he’s reminded that although their lives look a bit different these days, the good times haven’t gone anywhere. They’re still living them.

Harry fishes the key to the front door out of his pocket and lets them into their new home. It’s a lot smaller than the huge four bedroom house they lived in before, but it was getting to be too crowded with five grown men as permanent residents, Lisa, who now stays over with Niall more nights out of the week than not, Zayn’s new _friend_ or whatever the hell he’s now calling the not-so-casual-anymore sex he’s been having with the gorgeous guy the met at the pub and has _totally_ fallen for, and not to mention, Amanda, the resident from Liam’s hospital whom he is openly head over heels for because he’s an adult who can admit his feelings unlike some stubborn people whose name rhymes with Jayn. He and Harry only have two bedrooms now. One for them and one for guests which has already been utilized by Niall once after a night of sharing a wall with Zayn and his very vocal _friend_.

The decision to move out wasn’t a light one. He and Harry have been together less than a year. They had been thinking about the possibility of getting a place of their own one day but there wasn’t any rush. Louis assumed they’d start looking for places sometime in the next year, but they didn’t have to wait that long or go very far for the perfect house to fall right into their laps.

The family who used to live here moved into a bigger house. Harry saw the ‘for rent’ sign one afternoon during his run and within weeks the two of them were furniture shopping and boxing up all their stuff. Now they have their own space where no one cares if Harry walks around starkers through the corridors and Louis can sit in the armchair to watch movies or wherever he bloody pleases without Zayn threatening to murder him. This is officially _their_ home. Both of their names are even on the lease. Harry couldn’t be on it at first without a last name or real identity which posed a bit of a problem, so they simply had to get him one. Or steal him one more like, but it’s not like _Henry_ Edward Styles who died in 1933 is using it. And besides, at the rate the two of them are shooting through life milestones lately, it’s probably only temporary.

The sound of Harry sighing as he toes off his boots and then flops back on the sofa, makes Louis want to do the same since it’s the only place they currently have downstairs to lounge. There are boxes from the old house in nearly every corner that they’ve yet to unpack and there’s still half a house worth of furniture that has yet to be delivered.

The only part of their living room that looks lived in at all is the wide kitchen table they’ve been too lazy to move to the actual kitchen. It’s currently housing all of Louis’ research for the journal he’s publishing about his success with the lake along with Harry’s brand new laptop and the mountain of books for the online classes he now takes during the day; yet another perk of having an actual identity.

They spent an entire Sunday afternoon locked up in Louis room in the old house coming up with a list of things Harry was interested in enough to pursue as career paths. He loves learning about everything so the list ended up covering two sheets of paper, but they eventually narrowed it down to about five and every one of them involved helping other people. One day Harry might figure out how to reverse climate change or be a genius composer, but for now he just wants to help save lives like Liam so he’s studying to become a nurse.

“I _love_ this sofa. _Our_ sofa,” Harry corrects when Louis sits down next to him. He certainly looks comfortable all sprawled out like a starfish with half his limbs elegantly thrown over the back of it.

“Really? You love it more than our bed?” Louis grins, pushing the unruly pieces of his boyfriend’s hair back into place with the rest of it. Their bed is definitely Louis’ personal favorite thing about their new place. Harry never really got used to sleeping in the open space of a regular bed and for Louis, curling up in the bottom of a bathtub never appealed to him for obvious reasons. They had the chance to fix that when they moved out of the old house. They now sleep under a giant canopy that gives Harry the feeling of being closed in the way he likes and it gives Louis the opportunity to wake up cuddled into him every morning. It’s honestly the best decision they’ve ever made.

“Okay, you’re right,” he says after giving it some thought. “The bed is way better. Let’s go there,” he grins, already halfway up the stairs as Louis gets up to lock their front door. He’s just about to turn off the lights when his pocket vibrates right on time with a message from one of the boys…which reminds him.

Louis walks over to all of Harry’s gift bags to locate the one from all of them. It’s a photo from when Harry first got the job at the pub when they all showed up to support him. Liam and Zayn are holding each other up in the picture which is impressive considering how drunk they were, Niall looks annoyed that he _isn’t_ drunk because he actually had to work that night, and then there’s Harry with his long hair and bright smile that was so dazzling Louis forgot to look at the camera when Sean finished counting down from three. And to think, Louis actually believed that he wasn’t falling for him when it’s written all over his lovesick face.

He quickly reads his best friend’s message after placing the photo on top of a stack of boxes, grinning in triumph because he knew Zayn wouldn’t be able to resist. _‘We made it. No one died. Have a good night with Haz. Love you.’_ Louis texts him back and says he loves Zayn too. He also instructs him to make extra breakfast in the morning because he and Harry are crashing. To which Zayn lovingly replies, ‘ _No pants, no shirt, no service.’_

When Louis gets to their bedroom Harry is already without most of those things, busy getting undressed. He tosses his shirt and jeans in the general vicinity of where their clothes bin will go once they finally get around to unpacking it, though they’ve made more headway in this room than anywhere else in the house. The frame for their four-poster bed was the first thing to be assembled followed by the soft lights they strung up along the ceiling. The lights layered in with the canopy give the illusion that they’re sleeping under the stars and clouds at night. It’s something they both love about their new room, and also, it just looks cool.

Harry collapses onto his stomach so Louis sits down beside him, gently scratching his nails through the back of his hair and across his muscled back. He hears Harry hum in contentment from his touch, his naked body practically melding into their messy duvet when Louis presses a slow kiss to his shoulder blade.

“So,” Louis whispers. “Just how sleepy are you exactly?”

His words fall against the shell of Harry’s ear making a wicked, dimply grin spread across his face. He’s certainly wide awake now.

“Well, I don’t know,” Harry answers after pretending to mull it over. “It depends. Is there something in particular I’m staying up for?” They’re staying up because he has no idea Louis tore through seven boxes of junk this morning just to find Harry’s beloved scented candles to match the bath bombs and new bottles of nail polish Lottie sent him for his birthday.

“Oh, I think we can maybe work something out. I think a nice _bath_ sounds good,” Louis grins as his lips brush along his skin. He can’t tell if Harry’s breath catches from that or if he’s just that excited. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

Louis gets up and then glances over his shoulder at Harry now sitting straight up on the bed to watch Louis head for the bathroom. He laughs as Harry ignores his request entirely by darting past him in order to get there first.

\---

The heat from the water slowly seeps into Louis’ skin when he dips the tips of his fingers in to test it. It’s perfect since Harry likes it just on the cusp of being too warm. He’s already leaned back against the wall of the tub, hardly blinking or breathing as Louis takes off his clothes and then steps over the edge to join him.

Louis situates himself between Harry’s legs so that his back is supported by Harry’s chest, slowly dragging his nails up and down Harry’s thighs beneath the rose-colored water, feeling him inhale and release a relaxed sigh.

“Feel good?” Louis asks. Even though they have their amazing new bed, the bathtub remains one of Harry’s favorite places. Unfortunately, they only got to do things like this a couple of times in the old house when privacy and time allowed. Here, they can hog the bathroom all night and stay in the water as long as they want.

“Mhmm,” Harry breathes, already growing hard against Louis’ spine. Louis allows the tips of his fingers to graze over his tip, drawing a small gasp from Harry that has his hips moving in search of more.

Louis only teases him for a bit, soon grinding back onto him until Harry’s hands are gripped so tight around the edge of the tub they’re shaking. Louis keeps it up, purposefully driving him mad until he’s whining at the back of his throat.

“What do you want, love? What do you need?”

“You. Please, Lou. I just- I just want to feel you.”

Every time Harry gets this desperate it sends adrenaline racing through Louis’ veins whether he’s fucking Harry or even if it’s the other way around. Louis loves everything they do together simply because it involves the two of them. Also, he just likes knowing that Harry wants him so badly.

Louis doesn’t ask him if he’d like to be ridden. The eager sound Harry makes when Louis turns around in the water to straddle him and open himself up is more than enough. When he sinks down onto Harry the room feels void of all air, the majority of it having been sucked up from the gasps they make into each other’s mouths.

The sex they had this morning is no help to Louis as his body adjusts to Harry’s size. Louis pushed inside of him when their good morning slash birthday kisses turned into much more, but it gets easier to breathe and to move after a minute or so. Harry’s hands leave the safety of the tub’s edge to hold Louis steady over his lap as he slowly brings Harry off with the rhythm of his hips. Eventually, Harry’s hands find their way around his bum, his grip tight as he gently thrusts up to meet him, causing Louis’ heart to skip a beat every time Harry’s tip brushes against his spot. 

He can tell Harry’s close already just from the soft moans falling onto his lips when Louis sucks a dark bruise into the flesh beneath his ear. He knots his fingers into Harry’s damp hair, bracing himself for the moment Harry tenses and then jerks to a finish inside of him.

Louis hasn’t come yet and Harry notices this when he reopens his eyes to find Louis’ skin still flushed as he quickly works his hand over himself to catch up. He’s stopped before he can get close, wincing as Harry pulls out of him to use his fingers instead, expertly finding Louis’ spot as soon they’re inside of him. Harry takes over jerking him off for the remainder of the few seconds he’s able to hold out with Harry wrecking him in the best possible way. All Louis can do his bury his face in his neck, coming so violently his eyes water from the force of it.

Louis’ body is still trembling with aftershocks when Harry slips his fingers out of him and coaxes Louis to lift his head. There must be something on the apple of his cheek; tears he realizes when Harry carefully wipes them away with his thumb, grinning when Louis’ eyes flutter closed again just from that small touch.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Louis says back, using all of his energy just to utter that one syllable.

“Are you still alive?” he chuckles.

 _Barely._ “Mhmm. Yep. I’m great,” Louis nods. “ _Fantastic_ ,” he says right before his forehead lands right back on Harry’s shoulder and he gets jostled by his laughter.

Louis has no idea what time it is when his head hits the pillow later that night. All he knows is that he’s exhausted and cold now that he’s out of the bath, but thankfully he’s got someone to keep him warm lying right beside him. He curls up on his boyfriend’s chest, sighing when a strong arm wraps around his middle to keep him there.

They’ve had a quite the day from two fire rounds of birthday sex to long, quiet surprise party kisses shared in their unofficial corner booth at the pub. He wanted this day to be special for Harry. For him to be able to look back on it and smile. Louis really hopes he has at least accomplished that.

“Did you have a good day, babe?” he asks when Harry laces their fingers to rest on top of his chest too. Now Louis can hear as well as feel the beat of Harry’s heart when he looks down at Louis with the exact happy smile Louis had in mind.

“Are you serious? I had the _best_ day.” Louis can’t help but smile with him. If Harry’s happy then he’s happy. “It’s been one of my absolute favorites,” he continues. “Only days that really good things happen get that honor.”

“Oh, yeah?” Louis sits up a bit so he can see him better. “Like what? When was another one?”

“The first time I had pizza,” he answers without even having to think about it. Louis remembers that day. Niall had to order extra because Harry ate a whole large by himself. “The first time I ever heard music was a big one. Also, the first time you kissed me,” Harry whispers. “That night was the only one I cared about for a long time.”

Louis remembers that night too in vivid detail. He’ll never forget it; none of their firsts.

“That day’s on my list too,” he grins pressing a kiss to the back of Harry’s hand. That counts for any day they’ve spent together this year. Each one has been amazing in its own way. Falling in love with Harry has been the greatest ride of his life.

Louis settles back down in his usual spot, letting Harry’s heartbeat lull him to sleep. He’s just on the edge of consciousness when Harry’s voice softly rumbles beneath his ear.

“But, we’re not done, right?” he asks.

Louis’ eyes fly open once Harry’s words sink in, assuming he’s referring to sex. Louis is just about to give yet another in-depth explanation to his dear super-human boyfriend concerning his certain death if he comes any more tonight when Harry laughs at his alarmed expression.

“I meant, we’re not done with _us_ ,” he clarifies. “With you and me and favorite days.”

Louis breathes a laugh and a quiet sigh of relief for his penis before he shifts to drop a sure kiss to Harry’s lips. “We’re not even close, babe. I honestly don’t think we could ever stop.”

They love each other far too much for that. He hopes they have a whole lifetime full of memorable moments. Louis can think of a million and one things they’ve yet to do together and things they’ve already done that he can’t wait to do again.

They’re nowhere near done. This is just the beginning.

**Author's Note:**

>  Also, a billion thanks to Fallinglikethis(Zayniam) for putting up with my extreme excitement about this! Also, thanks to anyone else who reads it :)
> 
> [rebloggable fic post](http://all-these-larrythings.tumblr.com/post/165543093551/keeping-you-forever-and-for-always-50k-by)


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